English

Tutte polynomials of hyperplane arrangements and the finite field method

Combinatorics 2017-10-05 v1

Abstract

The Tutte polynomial is a fundamental invariant associated to a graph, matroid, vector arrangement, or hyperplane arrangement. This short survey focuses on some of the most important results on Tutte polynomials of hyperplane arrangements. We show that many enumerative, algebraic, geometric, and topological invariants of a hyperplane arrangement can be expressed in terms of its Tutte polynomial. We also show that, even if one is only interested in computing the Tutte polynomial of a graph or a matroid, the theory of hyperplane arrangements provides a powerful finite field method for this computation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.01424,
  title  = {Tutte polynomials of hyperplane arrangements and the finite field method},
  author = {Federico Ardila},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.01424},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

19 pages, 5 figures. This is a preliminary version of a chapter of the upcoming CRC Handbook on the Tutte Polynomial and Related Topics