Skeletons of stable maps I: Rational curves in toric varieties

Abstract: We study the Berkovich analytification of the space of genus $0$ logarithmic stable maps to a toric variety $X$ and present applications to both algebraic and tropical geometry. On algebraic side, insights from tropical geometry give two new geometric descriptions of this space of maps -- (1) as an explicit toroidal modification of $\overline M_{0,n}\times X$ and (2) as a tropical compactification in a toric variety. On the combinatorial side, we prove that the tropicalization of the space of genus $0$ logarithmic stable maps coincides with the space of tropical stable maps, giving a large new collection of examples of faithful tropicalizations for moduli. Moreover, we identify the optimal settings in which the tropicalization of the moduli space of maps is faithful. The Nishinou--Siebert correspondence theorem is shown to be a consequence of this geometric connection between the algebraic and tropical moduli spaces.