The Maslov Dequantization, Idempotent and Tropical Mathematics: a Very Brief Introduction

This paper is a very brief introduction to idempotent mathematics and related topics. It appears as an introductory paper in the volume Idempotent Mathematics and Mathematical Physics (G. L. Litvinov and V. P. Maslov, eds; AMS Contemporary Mathematics Proceedings Series, 2005) [73]. This paper is a very brief introduction, without exact theorems and proofs, to the Maslov dequantization and idempotent and tropical mathematics. Our list of references is not complete (not at all). Additional references can be found, e.g., in the electronic archive