The first cotangent cohomology module for matroids (Q6082521)

Matroids come in different flavours, by the so-called cryptomorphic definitions. Understanding them via the language of circuits, they are simplicial complexes \(\Delta\) with certain additional properties. In particular, they give rise to Stanley-Reisner rings, i.e., they encode affine schemes \(\mathbb{A}(\Delta)\) defined by monomial ideals. In the present paper, the multigraded cotangent cohomolgy modules \(T^i\big(\mathbb{A}(\Delta)\big)\) are analyzed under the aspect whether the given simplicial complex \(\Delta\) is a matroid or not. The main results are the following: \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] In case \(\Delta\) is a matroid, the authors provide an explicit formula for the dimension of the homogeneous summands \(T^1\big(\mathbb{A}(\Delta)\big)_c\) in terms of numbers of circuits related to \(c\). \item[(ii)] There is provided an upper bound for \(\dim T^1\big(\mathbb{A}(\Delta)\big)_c\) for all simplicial complexes \(\Delta\). Afterwards, it is obtained that attaining extremal values of this estimate characterizes matroids. \item[(iii)] The rigid matroids (i.e., \(T^1=0\)) are explicitely classified, and non-rigid matroids can be recovered by knowing their multigraded \(T^1\)-spaces. \end{itemize}