Lagrangian combinatorics of matroids

Combinatorial aspects of matroids and geometric lattices (05B35) Combinatorial aspects of simplicial complexes (05E45) Combinatorial aspects of tropical varieties (14T15) Matroids in convex geometry (realizations in the context of convex polytopes, convexity in combinatorial structures, etc.) (52B40)

Abstract: The Lagrangian geometry of matroids was introduced in [ADH20] through the construction of the conormal fan of a matroid M. We used the conormal fan to give a Lagrangian-geometric interpretation of the h-vector of the broken circuit complex of M: its entries are the degrees of the mixed intersections of certain convex piecewise linear functions

g a m m a

and

d e l t a

on the conormal fan of M. By showing that the conormal fan satisfies the Hodge-Riemann relations, we proved Brylawski's conjecture that this h-vector is a log-concave sequence. This sequel explores the Lagrangian combinatorics of matroids, further developing the combinatorics of biflats and biflags of a matroid, and relating them to the theory of basis activities developed by Tutte, Crapo, and Las Vergnas. Our main result is a combinatorial strengthening of the

h

-vector computation: we write the k-th mixed intersection of

g a m m a

and

d e l t a

explicitly as a sum of biflags corresponding to the nbc-bases of internal activity k+1.

Review text

In [J. Am. Math. Soc. 36, No. 3, 727--794 (2023; Zbl 1512.05068)], the authors of the present paper under review provided a construction of the conormal fan of a simple, co-simple matroid \(M\), and used this construction to introduce the Lagrangian geometry of \(M\); they also used the conormal fan to give a Lagrangian-geometric interpretation of the \(h\)-vector of the broken circuit complex of \(M\). In particular, the \(h\)-vector has as entries the degrees of the mixed intersections of certain convex piecewise-linear functions \(\gamma\) and \(\delta\) on the conormal fan of \(M\). By showing that the conormal fan satisfies the Hodge-Riemann relations, the authors proved Brylawski's conjecture that this \(h\)-vector is a log-concave sequence. The present paper under review is the sequel to the paper described above. It explores the Lagrangian combinatorics of matroids, further developing the combinatorics of biflats and biflags of a matroid, and relating them to the theory of basis activities developed by \textit{W. T. Tutte} [J. Comb. Theory 2, 301--320 (1967; Zbl 0147.42902)], \textit{H. H. Crapo} [Aequationes Math. 3, 211--229 (1969; Zbl 0197.50202)] and \textit{M. Las Vergnas} [Eur. J. Comb. 34, No. 8, 1390--1405 (2013; Zbl 1296.05045)]. The authors' main result, Theorem 1.1, is a combinatorial realization of the intersection-theoretic computation above. In particular, the \(k\)-th mixed intersection of \(\gamma\) and \(\delta\) is expressed explicitly as a sum of biflags corresponding to the \textsl{nbc} bases of internal activity \(k + 1\).

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