English

Catalan matroid decompositions of certain positroids

Combinatorics 2018-07-25 v2

Abstract

A positroid is the matroid of a matrix whose maximal minors are all nonnegative. Given a permutation ww in SnS_n, the matroid of a generic n×nn \times n matrix whose non-zero entries in row ii lie in columns w(i)w(i) through n+in+i is an example of a positroid. We enumerate the bases of such a positroid as a sum of certain products of Catalan numbers, each term indexed by the 123123-avoiding permutations above ww in Bruhat order. We also give a similar sum formula for their Tutte polynomials. These are both avatars of a structural result writing such a positroid as a disjoint union of matroids, each isomorphic to a direct sum of Catalan matroids and a matroid with one basis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.00158,
  title  = {Catalan matroid decompositions of certain positroids},
  author = {Brendan Pawlowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.00158},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

20 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:17:45.058Z