Let P a polytope and let G(P) be the graph of P. Following Gil Kalai, we say that an acyclic orientation O of G(P) is good if, for every non-empty face F of P, the induced graph G(F) has exactly one sink. Gil Kalai gave a simple way to tell a simple polytope from the good orientations of its graph. This article is a broader study of ``good orientations'' (of the graphs) on matroid polytopes.
In 1988, Kalai extended a construction of Billera and Lee to produce many triangulated (d-1)-spheres. In fact, in view of upper bounds on the number of simplicial d-polytopes by Goodman and Pollack, he derived that for every dimension d>=5, most of these (d-1)-spheres are not polytopal. However, for d=4, this reasoning fails. We can now show that, as already conjectured by Kalai, all of his 3-spheres are in fact polytopal. Moreover, we can now give a shorter proof of Hebble & Lee's 2000 result that the dual graphs of these 4-polytopes are Hamiltonian. Therefore, the polars of these Kalai polyt…
The weak-map order on the matroid base polytopes is the partial order defined by inclusion. Lucas proved that the base polytope of no binary matroid includes the base polytope of a connected matroid. A matroid base polytope is said to be decomposable when it has a polytopal decomposition which consists of at least two matroid base polytopes. We shed light on the relation between the decomposability and the weak-map order of matroid base polytopes. We classify matroids into five types with respect to the weak-map order and decomposability. We give an example of a matroid in each class. Moreover…
In this paper, we study flag structures of matroid base polytopes. We describe faces of matroid base polytopes in terms of matroid data, and give conditions for hyperplane splits of matroid base polytopes. Also, we show how the cd-index of a polytope can be expressed when a polytope is split by a hyperplane, and apply these to the cd-index of a matroid base polytope of a rank 2 matroid.
A lattice path matroid is a transversal matroid corresponding to a pair of lattice paths on the plane. A matroid base polytope is the polytope whose vertices are the incidence vectors of the bases of the given matroid. In this paper, we study facial structures of matroid base polytopes corresponding to lattice path matroids.
In 1989 Kalai stated the three conjectures A, B, C of increasing strength concerning face numbers of centrally symmetric convex polytopes. The weakest conjecture, A, became known as the ``$3^d$-conjecture''. It is well-known that the three conjectures hold in dimensions d \leq 3. We show that in dimension 4 only conjectures A and B are valid, while conjecture C fails. Furthermore, we show that both conjectures B and C fail in all dimensions d \geq 5.
We present a new algorithm for computing the volume of an arbitrary matroid base polytope. We provide two applications of this approach: a relation between the volume of the base polytope of a matroid $\M$ and its relaxation $\M'$, and a formula for the volume of an arbitrary sparse paving matroid base polytope.
We prove that the ranks of the subsets and the activities of the bases of a matroid define valuations for the subdivisions of a matroid polytope into smaller matroid polytopes.
A famous theorem in polytope theory states that the combinatorial type of a simplicial polytope is completely determined by its facet-ridge graph. This celebrated result was proven by Blind and Mani in 1987, via a non-constructive proof using topological tools from homology theory. An elegant constructive proof was given by Kalai shortly after. In their original paper, Blind and Mani asked whether their result can be extended to simplicial spheres, and a positive answer to their question was conjectured by Kalai in 2009. In this paper, we show that Kalai's conjecture holds in the particular ca…
A conjecture of Kalai from 1994 posits that for an arbitrary $2\leq k\leq \lfloor d/2 \rfloor$, the combinatorial type of a simplicial $d$-polytope $P$ is uniquely determined by the $(k-1)$-skeleton of $P$ (given as an abstract simplicial complex) together with the space of affine $k$-stresses on $P$. We establish the first non-trivial case of this conjecture, namely, the case of $k=2$. We also prove that for a general $k$, Kalai's conjecture holds for the class of $k$-neighborly polytopes.
In this paper we investigate the number of integer points lying in dilations of lattice path matroid polytopes. We give a characterization of such points as polygonal paths in the diagram of the lattice path matroid. Furthermore, we prove that lattice path matroid polytopes are affinely equivalent to a family of distributive polytopes. As applications we obtain two new infinite families of matroids verifying a conjecture of De Loera et.~al. and present an explicit formula of the Ehrhart polynomial for one of them.
We specify what is meant for a polytope to be reconstructible from its graph or dual graph. And we introduce the problem of class reconstructibility, i.e., the face lattice of the polytope can be determined from the (dual) graph within a given class. We provide examples of cubical polytopes that are not reconstructible from their dual graphs. Furthermore, we show that matroid (base) polytopes are not reconstructible from their graphs and not class reconstructible from their dual graphs; our counterexamples include hypersimplices. Additionally, we prove that matroid polytopes are class reconstr…
We investigate properties of Ehrhart polynomials for matroid polytopes, independence matroid polytopes, and polymatroids. In the first half of the paper we prove that for fixed rank their Ehrhart polynomials are computable in polynomial time. The proof relies on the geometry of these polytopes as well as a new refined analysis of the evaluation of Todd polynomials. In the second half we discuss two conjectures about the h^*-vector and the coefficients of Ehrhart polynomials of matroid polytopes; we provide theoretical and computational evidence for their validity.
This dissertation presents new results on three different themes all related to matroid polytopes. First we investigate properties of Ehrhart polynomials of matroid polytopes, independence matroid polytopes, and polymatroids. We prove that for fixed rank their Ehrhart polynomials are computable in polynomial time. The proof relies on the geometry of these polytopes as well as a new refined analysis of the evaluation of Todd polynomials. Second, we discuss theoretical results regarding the algebraic combinatorics of matroid polytopes. We discuss two conjectures about the h^*-vector and coeffici…
It is known that a lattice path matroid polytope can be associated with two given noncrossing lattice paths on $\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}$ with the same end points. In this short note we give explicit formulae for the $f$-vector, toric $f$- and $g$-polynomials of a lattice path matroid polytope when two boundary paths enclose a hook shape.
A positroid is a special case of a realizable matroid that arose from the study of the totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian by Postnikov. In this paper, we study the facets of its matroid polytope and the independent set polytope. This allows one to describe the bases and independent sets directly from the decorated permutation, bypassing the use of the Grassmann necklace. We also describe a criterion for determining whether a given cyclic interval is a flat or not using the decorated permutation, then show how it applies to checking the concordancy of positroids.
The Folkman-Lawrence topological representation theorem, which states that every (loop-free) oriented matroid of rank $r$ can be represented as a pseudosphere arrangement on the $(r-1)$-dimensional sphere $S^{r-1}$, is one of the most outstanding results in oriented matroid theory. In this paper, we provide a lower-dimensional version of the topological representation theorem for uniform matroid polytopes of rank $4$. We introduce $2$-weak configurations of points and pseudocircles ($2$-weak PPC configurations) on $S^2$ and prove that every uniform matroid polytope of rank $4$ can be represent…
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 $c \cdot n^{-5/2} \cdot ρ^{-n}$, wher…
Fix two lattice paths $P$ and $Q$ from $(0,0)$ to $(m,r)$ that use East and North steps with $P $ never going above $Q$. Bonin et al. show that the lattice paths that go from $(0,0)$ to $(m,r)$ and remain bounded by $P$ and $Q$ can be identified with the bases of a particular type of transversal matroid, which we call it a lattice path matroid. In this paper, we consider properties of lattice path matroid polytopes. These are the polytopes associated to the lattice path matroids. We investigate their face structure, decomposition, triangulation, Ehrhart polynomial and volume.
Describing the combinatorial structure of the tropical complex $C$ of a tropical matroid polytope, we obtain a formula for the coarse types of the maximal cells of $C$. Due to the connection between tropical complexes and resolutions of monomial ideals, this yields the generators for the corresponding coarse type ideal introduced in a recent paper of Dochtermann, Joswig and Sanyal (2010, preprint arXiv.org:1001.0237). Furthermore, a complete description of the minimal tropical halfspaces of the uniform tropical matroid polytopes, i.e. the tropical hypersimplices, is given.
This is a continuation of the early paper concerning matroid base polytope decomposition. Here, we will present sufficient conditions on $M$ so its base matroid polytope $P(M)$ has a {\em sequence} of hyperplane splits. The latter yields to decompositions of $P(M)$ with two or more pieces for infinitely many matroids $M$. We also present necessary conditions on the Euclidean representation of rank three matroids $M$ for the existences of decompositions of $P(M)$ into $2$ or $3$ pieces. Finally, we prove that $P(M_1 \oplus M_2)$ has a sequence of hyperplane splits if either $P(M_1)$ or $P(M_2)$…
Let $P(M)$ be the matroid base polytope of a matroid $M$. A {\em matroid base polytope decomposition} of $P(M)$ is a decomposition of the form $P(M) = \bigcup\limits_{i=1}^t P(M_{i})$ where each $P(M_i)$ is also a matroid base polytope for some matroid $M_i$, and for each $1\le i \neq j\le t$, the intersection $P(M_{i}) \cap P(M_{j})$ is a face of both $P(M_i)$ and $P(M_j)$. In this paper, we investigate {\em hyperplane splits}, that is, polytope decompositions when $t=2$. We give sufficient conditions for $M$ so $P(M)$ has a hyperplane split and characterize when $P(M_1 \oplus M_2)$ has a hyp…
Neighborly polytopes are those that maximize the number of faces in each dimension among all polytopes with the same number of vertices. Despite their extremal properties they form a surprisingly rich class of polytopes, which has been widely studied and is the subject of many open problems and conjectures. In this paper, we study the enumeration of neighborly polytopes beyond the cases that have been computed so far. To this end, we enumerate neighborly oriented matroids --- a combinatorial abstraction of neighborly polytopes --- of small rank and corank. In particular, if we denote by OM($r,…
We tackle the problem of a combinatorial classification of finite metric spaces via their fundamental polytopes, as suggested by Vershik in 2010. In this paper we consider a hyperplane arrangement associated to every split pseudometric and, for tree-like metrics, we study the combinatorics of its underlying matroid. We give explicit formulas for the face numbers of fundamental polytopes and Lipschitz polytopes of all tree-like metrics, and we characterize the metric trees for which the fundamental polytope is simplicial.
A well-known theorem of Blind and Mani says that every simple polytope is uniquely determined by its graph. Kalai gave a very short and elegant proof of this result using the concept of acyclic orientations. As it turns out, Kalai's proof can be suitably generalized without much effort. We apply our results to a special class of cubical polytopes.
Shelling orders are a ubiquitous tool used to understand invariants of cell complexes. Significant effort has been made to develop techniques to decide when a given complex is shellable. However, empirical evidence shows that some shelling orders are better than others. In this article, we explore this phenomenon in the case of matroid independence complexes. Based on a new relation between shellability of dual matroid polytopes and independence complexes, we outline a systematic way to investigate and compare different shellings orders. We explain how our new tools recast and deepen various c…
In this paper we investigate the Ehrhart Theory of the independence matroid polytope of uniform matroids. It is proved that these polytopes have an Ehrhart polynomial with positive coefficients. To do that, we prove that indeed all half-open-hypersimplices are Ehrhart positive, and tile disjointly our polytope using them.
Neighborly cubical polytopes exist: for any $n\ge d\ge 2r+2$, there is a cubical convex d-polytope $C^n_d$ whose $r$-skeleton is combinatorially equivalent to that of the $n$-dimensional cube. This solves a problem of Babson, Billera & Chan. Kalai conjectured that the boundary $\partial C^n_d$ of a neighborly cubical polytope $C^n_d$ maximizes the $f$-vector among all cubical $(d-1)$-spheres with $2^n$ vertices. While we show that this is true for polytopal spheres for $n\le d+1$, we also give a counter-example for $d=4$ and $n=6$. Further, the existence of neighborly cubical polytopes shows t…
Given a combinatorial optimization problem $Π$ and an increasing finite sequence $c$ of natural numbers, we obtain a cardinality constrained version $Π_c$ of $Π$ by permitting only those feasible solutions of $Π$ whose cardinalities are members of $c$. We are interested in polyhedra associated with those problems, in particular in inequalities that cut off solutions of forbidden cardinality. Maurras (1977) and Camion and Maurras (1982) introduced a family of inequalities, that we call forbidden set inequalities, which can be used to cut off those solutions. However, these inequalities are in g…
We characterize the edges of two classes of $0/1$-polytopes. The first class corresponds to the stable set polytope of a graph $G$ and includes chain polytopes of posets, some instances of matroid independence polytopes, as well as newly-defined polytopes whose vertices correspond to noncrossing set partitions. In analogy with matroid basis polytopes, the second class is obtained by considering the stable sets of maximal cardinality. We investigate how the class of $0/1$-polytopes whose edges satisfy our characterization is situated within the hierarchy of $0/1$-polytopes. This includes the cl…
Given an undirected graph, the non-empty subgraph polytope is the convex hull of the characteristic vectors of pairs (F, S) where S is a non-empty subset of nodes and F is a subset of the edges with both endnodes in S. We obtain a strong relationship between the non-empty subgraph polytope and the spanning forest polytope. We further show that these polytopes provide polynomial size extended formulations for independence polytopes of count matroids, which generalizes recent results obtained by Iwata et al. referring to sparsity matroids. As a byproduct, we obtain new lower bounds on the extens…
The generators of the classical Specht module satisfy intricate relations. We introduce the Specht matroid, which keeps track of these relations, and the Specht polytope, which also keeps track of convexity relations. We establish basic facts about the Specht polytope, for example, that the symmetric group acts transitively on its vertices and irreducibly on its ambient real vector space. A similar construction builds a matroid and polytope for a tensor product of Specht modules, giving "Kronecker matroids" and "Kronecker polytopes" instead of the usual Kronecker coefficients. We dub this proc…
We provide a formula for the Ehrhart polynomial of the connected matroid of size $n$ and rank $k$ with the least number of bases, also known as a minimal matroid. We prove that their polytopes are Ehrhart positive and $h^*$-real-rooted (and hence unimodal). We prove that the operation of circuit-hyperplane relaxation relates minimal matroids and matroid polytopes subdivisions, and also preserves Ehrhart positivity. We state two conjectures: that indeed all matroids are $h^*$-real-rooted, and that the coefficients of the Ehrhart polynomial of a connected matroid of fixed rank and cardinality ar…
Cycle polytopes of matroids have been introduced in combinatorial optimization as a generalization of important classes of polyhedral objects like cut polytopes and Eulerian subgraph polytopes associated to graphs. Here we start an algebraic and geometric investigation of these polytopes by studying their toric algebras, called cycle algebras, and their defining ideals. Several matroid operations are considered which determine faces of cycle polytopes that belong again to this class of polyhedral objects. As a key technique used in this paper, we study certain minors of given matroids which yi…
We present a simple proof of the fact that the base (and independence) polytope of a rank $n$ regular matroid over $m$ elements has an extension complexity $O(mn)$.
A new isomorphism invariant of matroids is introduced, in the form of a quasisymmetric function. This invariant (1) defines a Hopf morphism from the Hopf algebra of matroids to the quasisymmetric functions, which is surjective if one uses rational coefficients, (2) is a multivariate generating function for integer weight vectors that give minimum total weight to a unique base of the matroid, (3) is equivalent, via the Hopf antipode, to a generating function for integer weight vectors which keeps track of how many bases minimize the total weight, (4) behaves simply under matroid duality, (5) ha…
We present a partial description of which polytopes are reconstructible from their graphs. This is an extension of work by Blind and Mani (1987) and Kalai (1988), which showed that simple polytopes can be reconstructed from their graphs. In particular, we introduce a notion of $h$-nearly simple and prove that 1-nearly simple and 2-nearly simple polytopes are reconstructible from their graphs. We also give an example of a 3-nearly simple polytope which is not reconstructible from its graph. Furthermore, we give a partial list of polytopes which are reconstructible from their graphs in an entire…
We express the matroid polytope $P_M$ of a matroid $M$ as a signed Minkowski sum of simplices, and obtain a formula for the volume of $P_M$. This gives a combinatorial expression for the degree of an arbitrary torus orbit closure in the Grassmannian $Gr_{k,n}$. We then derive analogous results for the independent set polytope and the associated flag matroid polytope of $M$. Our proofs are based on a natural extension of Postnikov's theory of generalized permutohedra.
De Loera et al. 2009, showed that when the rank is fixed the Ehrhart polynomial of a matroid polytope can be computed in polynomial time when the number of elements varies. A key to proving this is the fact that the number of simplicial cones in any triangulation of a tangent cone is bounded polynomially in the number of elements when the rank is fixed. The authors speculated whether or not the Ehrhart polynomial could be computed in polynomial time in terms of the number of bases, where the number of elements and rank are allowed to vary. We show here that for the uniform matroid of rank $r$ …
Ardila and Develin's paper on tropical oriented hyperplane arrangements and tropical oriented matroids defines tropical oriented matroids and conjectures a bijection between them and triangulations of products of simplices $Δ_{n-1} \times Δ_{d-1}$. Oh and Yoo recently confirmed this conjecture; however, neither group addressed the case of hyperplanes that are not in generic position. These non-generic arrangements do not correspond to tropical oriented matroids, but they encode information about subdivisions of $Δ_{n-1} \times Δ_{d-1}$. This note considers the non-generic case and presents som…