Hirota varieties and rational nodal curves.

The Hirota variety parameterizes solutions to the KP equation arising from a degenerate Riemann theta function. In this work, we study in detail the Hirota variety arising from a rational nodal curve. Of particular interest is the irreducible subvariety defined as the image of a parameterization map, we call this the main component. Proving that this is an irreducible component of the Hirota variety corresponds to solving a weak Schottky problem for rational nodal curves. We solve this problem up to genus nine using computational tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]