Related papers: Matroids, motives and conjecture of Kontsevich
Kontsevich conjectured that the number f(G,q) of zeros over the finite field with q elements of a certain polynomial connected with the spanning trees of a graph G is polynomial function of q. We have been unable to settle Kontsevich's…
Let $M=(E,\mathcal B)$ be an $\mathbb F_q$-linear matroid; denote by ${\mathcal B}$ the family of its bases, $s(M;\alpha)=\sum_{B\in\mathcal B}\prod_{e \in B} \alpha_e$, where ${\alpha_e\in \mathbb F_q}$. According to the Kontsevich…
Anari, Gharan, and Vinzant proved (complete) log-concavity of the basis generating functions for all matroids. From the viewpoint of combinatorial Hodge theory, it is natural to ask whether these functions are "strictly" log-concave for…
Inspired by Feynman integral computations in quantum field theory, Kontsevich conjectured in 1997 that the number of points of graph hypersurfaces over a finite field $\F_q$ is a (quasi-) polynomial in $q$. Stembridge verified this for all…
We associate to every matroid M a polynomial with integer coefficients, which we call the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial of M, in analogy with Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials in representation theory. We conjecture that the coefficients are always…
For a finite multigraph G, the reliability function of G is the probability R_G(q) that if each edge of G is deleted independantly with probability q then the remaining edges of G induce a connected spanning subgraph of G; this is a…
George Birkhoff proved in 1912 that the number of proper colorings of a finite graph G with n colors is a polynomial in n, called the chromatic polynomial of G. Read conjectured in 1968 that for any graph G, the sequence of absolute values…
We prove the complete monotonicity on $(0,\infty)^n$ for suitable inverse powers of the spanning-tree polynomials of graphs and, more generally, of the basis generating polynomials of certain classes of matroids. This generalizes a result…
Finite matroids are combinatorial structures that express the concept of linear independence. In 1964, G.-C. Rota conjectured that the coefficients of the "characteristic polynomial" of a matroid $M$, polynomial whose coefficients enumerate…
It is proved that for each prime field $GF(p)$, there is an integer $f(p)$ such that a 4-connected matroid has at most $f(p)$ inequivalent representations over $GF(p)$. We also prove a stronger theorem that obtains the same conclusion for…
The number of homomorphisms from a finite graph $F$ to the complete graph $K_n$ is the evaluation of the chromatic polynomial of $F$ at $n$. Suitably scaled, this is the Tutte polynomial evaluation $T(F;1-n,0)$ and an invariant of the cycle…
In 1977, Yu. V. Matiyasevich proposed a formula expressing the chromatic polynomial of an arbitrary graph as a linear combination of flow polynomials of subgraphs of the original graph. In this paper, we prove that this representation is a…
In 1999 Merino and Welsh conjectured that evaluations of the Tutte polynomial of a graph satisfy an inequality. In this short article we show that the conjecture generalized to matroids holds for the large class of all split matroids by…
This article is a survey of matroid theory aimed at algebraic geometers. Matroids are combinatorial abstractions of linear subspaces and hyperplane arrangements. Not all matroids come from linear subspaces; those that do are said to be…
This paper studies the properties of two kinds of matroids: (a) algebraic matroids and (b) finite and infinite matroids whose ground set have some canonical symmetry, for example row and column symmetry and transposition symmetry. For (a)…
We investigate the asymptotic behavior of entropy polymatroids associated with algebraic matroids over finite fields. Given an algebraic matroid ${\sf M}:=(\mathcal{E},r)$ and the irreducible variety $V$ associated with ${\sf M}$, we…
Let M be a matroid on E, representable over a field of characteristic zero. We show that h-vectors of the following simplicial complexes are log-concave: 1. The matroid complex of independent subsets of E. 2. The broken circuit complex of…
The Dowling lattice $Q_n(\mathfrak{G})$, $\mathfrak{G}$ a finite group, generalizes the geometric lattice generated by all vectors, over a field, with at most two nonzero components. Abstractly, it is a fundamental object in the…
Over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q^m}$, the evaluation of skew polynomials is intimately related to the evaluation of linearized polynomials. This connection allows one to relate the concept of polynomial independence defined for skew…
We introduce the Z-polynomial of a matroid, which we define in terms of the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial. We then exploit a symmetry of the Z-polynomial to derive a new recursion for Kazhdan-Lusztig coefficients. We solve this recursion,…