Hodge theory in combinatorics

DOI10.1090/BULL/1599MaRDI QIDQ4598015zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors

Publication date 19 December 2017

Published in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07960

zbMATH Keywords

chromatic polynomialRead's conjecture

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial aspects of matroids and geometric lattices (05B35) Coloring of graphs and hypergraphs (05C15) Singularities in algebraic geometry (14B05) Hodge theory in global analysis (58A14)

Abstract: 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 of coefficients of the chromatic polynomial is unimodal: it goes up, hits a peak, and then goes down. Read's conjecture was proved by June Huh in a 2012 paper making heavy use of methods from algebraic geometry. Huh's result was subsequently refined and generalized by Huh and Katz, again using substantial doses of algebraic geometry. Both papers in fact establish log-concavity of the coefficients, which is stronger than unimodality. The breakthroughs of Huh and Huh-Katz left open the more general Rota-Welsh conjecture where graphs are generalized to (not necessarily representable) matroids and the chromatic polynomial of a graph is replaced by the characteristic polynomial of a matroid. The Huh and Huh-Katz techniques are not applicable in this level of generality, since there is no underlying algebraic geometry to which to relate the problem. But in 2015 Adiprasito, Huh, and Katz announced a proof of the Rota-Welsh conjecture based on a novel approach motivated by but not making use of any results from algebraic geometry. The authors first prove that the Rota-Welsh conjecture would follow from combinatorial analogues of the Hard Lefschetz Theorem and Hodge-Riemann relations in algebraic geometry. They then implement an elaborate inductive procedure to prove the combinatorial Hard Lefschetz Theorem and Hodge-Riemann relations using purely combinatorial arguments. We will survey these developments.

Recommendations

• Hodge theory for combinatorial geometries
• Relations de Hodge--Riemann et combinatoire des matro\"ides (d'apr\`es K. Adiprasito, J. Huh et E. Katz)
• Rota’s Conjecture, the Missing Axiom, and Prime Cycles in Toric Varieties
• Milnor numbers of projective hypersurfaces and the chromatic polynomial of graphs
• The amazing chromatic polynomial

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Cited in

(19)

• Unimodal sequences: from Isaac Newton to June Huh
• Combinatorics and Hodge theory
• Combinatorial geometry takes the lead
• Top-heavy phenomena for transformations
• Log-concave Gorenstein sequences
• Convolution of a symmetric log-concave distribution and a symmetric bimodal distribution can have any number of modes
• Relations de Hodge--Riemann et combinatoire des matro\"ides (d'apr\`es K. Adiprasito, J. Huh et E. Katz)
• The Hodge theory of the Hecke category
• Milnor numbers of projective hypersurfaces and the chromatic polynomial of graphs
• Partial symmetries of iterated plethysms
• Patchworking real algebraic hypersurfaces with asymptotically large Betti numbers
• Hodge theory for combinatorial geometries
• Essence of independence: Hodge theory of matroids since June Huh
• Combinatorial Thom-Hirzebruch characteristic classes
• Divisors on matroids and their volumes
• Harmonic representatives in homology over arbitrary fields
• The works of June Huh
• Divisors on matroids and their volumes
• A path forward: tropicalization in extremal combinatorics

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