Mirror symmetry and tropical geometry

Using tropical geometry we propose a mirror construction for monomial degenerations of Calabi-Yau varieties in toric Fano varieties. The construction reproduces the mirror constructions by Batyrev for Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces and by Batyrev and Borisov for Calabi-Yau complete intersections. We apply the construction to Pfaffian examples and recover the mirror given by Rodland for the degree 14 Calabi-Yau threefold in PP^6 defined by the Pfaffians of a general linear 7x7 skew-symmetric matrix. We provide the necessary background knowledge entering into the tropical mirror construction such as toric geometry, Groebner bases, tropical geometry, Hilbert schemes and deformations. The tropical approach yields an algorithm which we illustrate in a series of explicit examples.Comment: 540 pages, 46 figure