Tropical Compactification via Ganter’s Algorithm

We describe a canonical compactification of a polyhedral complex in Euclidean space. When the recession cones of the polyhedral complex form a fan, the compactified polyhedral complex is a subspace of a tropical toric variety. In this case, the procedure is analogous to the tropical compactifications of subvarieties of tori. We give an analysis of the combinatorial structure of the compactification and show that its Hasse diagram can be computed via Ganter’s algorithm. Our algorithm is implemented in and shipped with polymake.