A matroid-friendly basis for the quasisymmetric functions

A new Z-basis for the space of quasisymmetric functions (QSym, for short) is presented. It is shown to have nonnegative structure constants, and several interesting properties relative to the space of quasisymmetric functions associated to matroids by the Hopf algebra morphism (F) of Billera, Jia, and Reiner. In particular, for loopless matroids, this basis reflects the grading by matroid rank, as well as by the size of the ground set. It is shown that the morphism F is injective on the set of rank two matroids, and that decomposability of the quasisymmetric function of a rank two matroid mirrors the decomposability of its base polytope. An affirmative answer is given to the Hilbert basis question raised by Billera, Jia, and Reiner.Comment: 25 pages; exposition tightened, typos corrected; to appear in the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series

Dimension, matroids, and dense pairs of first-order structures

A structure M is pregeometric if the algebraic closure is a pregeometry in all M' elementarily equivalent to M. We define a generalisation: structures with an existential matroid. The main examples are superstable groups of U-rank a power of omega and d-minimal expansion of fields. Ultraproducts of pregeometric structures expanding a field, while not pregeometric in general, do have an unique existential matroid. Generalising previous results by van den Dries, we define dense elementary pairs of structures expanding a field and with an existential matroid, and we show that the corresponding theories have natural completions, whose models also have a unique existential matroid. We extend the above result to dense tuples of structures.Comment: Version 2.8. 61 page

Tutte's dichromate for signed graphs

We introduce the ``trivariate Tutte polynomial" of a signed graph as an invariant of signed graphs up to vertex switching that contains among its evaluations the number of proper colorings and the number of nowhere-zero flows. In this, it parallels the Tutte polynomial of a graph, which contains the chromatic polynomial and flow polynomial as specializations. The number of nowhere-zero tensions (for signed graphs they are not simply related to proper colorings as they are for graphs) is given in terms of evaluations of the trivariate Tutte polynomial at two distinct points. Interestingly, the bivariate dichromatic polynomial of a biased graph, shown by Zaslavsky to share many similar properties with the Tutte polynomial of a graph, does not in general yield the number of nowhere-zero flows of a signed graph. Therefore the ``dichromate" for signed graphs (our trivariate Tutte polynomial) differs from the dichromatic polynomial (the rank-size generating function). The trivariate Tutte polynomial of a signed graph can be extended to an invariant of ordered pairs of matroids on a common ground set -- for a signed graph, the cycle matroid of its underlying graph and its frame matroid form the relevant pair of matroids. This invariant is the canonically defined Tutte polynomial of matroid pairs on a common ground set in the sense of a recent paper of Krajewski, Moffatt and Tanasa, and was first studied by Welsh and Kayibi as a four-variable linking polynomial of a matroid pair on a common ground set.Comment: 53 pp. 9 figure

A Combinatorial Formula for Principal Minors of a Matrix with Tree-metric Exponents and Its Applications

Let $T$ be a tree with a vertex set $\{ 1,2,\dots, N \}$. Denote by $d_{ij}$ the distance between vertices $i$ and $j$. In this paper, we present an explicit combinatorial formula of principal minors of the matrix $(t^{d_{ij}})$, and its applications to tropical geometry, study of multivariate stable polynomials, and representation of valuated matroids. We also give an analogous formula for a skew-symmetric matrix associated with $T$.Comment: 16 page

Many 2-level polytopes from matroids

The family of 2-level matroids, that is, matroids whose base polytope is 2-level, has been recently studied and characterized by means of combinatorial properties. 2-level matroids generalize series-parallel graphs, which have been already successfully analyzed from the enumerative perspective. We bring to light some structural properties of 2-level matroids and exploit them for enumerative purposes. Moreover, the counting results are used to show that the number of combinatorially non-equivalent (n-1)-dimensional 2-level polytopes is bounded from below by $c \cdot n^{-5/2} \cdot \rho^{-n}$, where $c\approx 0.03791727$ and $\rho^{-1} \approx 4.88052854$.Comment: revised version, 19 pages, 7 figure