On the Ehrhart Polynomial of Minimal Matroids

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 $$h^*$$ 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 $$h^*$$ h ∗ -real-rooted, and that the coefficients of the Ehrhart polynomial of a connected matroid of fixed rank and cardinality are bounded by those of the corresponding minimal matroid and the corresponding uniform matroid.

Ehrhart Polynomial Roots of Reflexive Polytopes

Recent work has focused on the roots $z\in\mathbb{C}$ of the Ehrhart polynomial of a lattice polytope $P$. The case when $\Re{z}=-1/2$ is of particular interest: these polytopes satisfy Golyshev's "canonical line hypothesis". We characterise such polytopes when $\mathrm{dim}(P)\leq 7$. We also consider the "half-strip condition", where all roots $z$ satisfy $-\mathrm{dim}(P)/2\leq\Re{z}\leq \mathrm{dim}(P)/2-1$, and show that this holds for any reflexive polytope with $\mathrm{dim}(P)\leq 5$. We give an example of a $10$-dimensional reflexive polytope which violates the half-strip condition, thus improving on an example by Ohsugi–Shibata in dimension $34$.

Interlacing polynomials and the veronese construction for rational formal power series

Fixing a positive integer r and $0 \les k \les r-1$, define $f^{\langle r,k \rangle }$ for every formal power series f as $ f(x) = f^{\langle r,0 \rangle }(x^r)+xf^{\langle r,1 \rangle }(x^r)+ \cdots +x^{r-1}f^{\langle r,r-1 \rangle }(x^r).$ Jochemko recently showed that the polynomial $U^{n}_{r,k}\, h(x) := ( (1+x+\cdots +x^{r-1})^{n} h(x) )^{\langle r,k \rangle }$ has only non-positive zeros for any $r \ges \deg h(x) -k$ and any positive integer n. As a consequence, Jochemko confirmed a conjecture of Beck and Stapledon on the Ehrhart polynomial $h(x)$ of a lattice polytope of dimension n, which states that $U^{n}_{r,0}\,h(x)$ has only negative, real zeros whenever $r\ges n$. In this paper, we provide an alternative approach to Beck and Stapledon's conjecture by proving the following general result: if the polynomial sequence $( h^{\langle r,r-i \rangle }(x))_{1\les i \les r}$ is interlacing, so is $( U^{n}_{r,r-i}\, h(x) )_{1\les i \les r}$. Our result has many other interesting applications. In particular, this enables us to give a new proof of Savage and Visontai's result on the interlacing property of some refinements of the descent generating functions for coloured permutations. Besides, we derive a Carlitz identity for refined coloured permutations.

GEOMETRIC BIJECTIONS FOR REGULAR MATROIDS, ZONOTOPES, AND EHRHART THEORY

Let $M$ be a regular matroid. The Jacobian group $\text{Jac}(M)$ of $M$ is a finite abelian group whose cardinality is equal to the number of bases of $M$ . This group generalizes the definition of the Jacobian group (also known as the critical group or sandpile group) $\operatorname{Jac}(G)$ of a graph $G$ (in which case bases of the corresponding regular matroid are spanning trees of $G$ ). There are many explicit combinatorial bijections in the literature between the Jacobian group of a graph $\text{Jac}(G)$ and spanning trees. However, most of the known bijections use vertices of $G$ in some essential way and are inherently ‘nonmatroidal’. In this paper, we construct a family of explicit and easy-to-describe bijections between the Jacobian group of a regular matroid $M$ and bases of $M$ , many instances of which are new even in the case of graphs. We first describe our family of bijections in a purely combinatorial way in terms of orientations; more specifically, we prove that the Jacobian group of $M$ admits a canonical simply transitive action on the set ${\mathcal{G}}(M)$ of circuit–cocircuit reversal classes of $M$ , and then define a family of combinatorial bijections $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}^{\ast }}$ between ${\mathcal{G}}(M)$ and bases of $M$ . (Here $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$ (respectively $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}^{\ast }$ ) is an acyclic signature of the set of circuits (respectively cocircuits) of $M$ .) We then give a geometric interpretation of each such map $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}^{\ast }}$ in terms of zonotopal subdivisions which is used to verify that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ is indeed a bijection. Finally, we give a combinatorial interpretation of lattice points in the zonotope $Z$ ; by passing to dilations we obtain a new derivation of Stanley’s formula linking the Ehrhart polynomial of $Z$ to the Tutte polynomial of $M$ .

Commutative and non-commutative bialgebras of quasi-posets and applications to Ehrhart polynomials

To any poset or quasi-poset is attached a lattice polytope, whose Ehrhart polynomial we study from a Hopf-algebraic point of view. We use for this two interacting bialgebras on quasi-posets. The Ehrhart polynomial defines a Hopf algebra morphism with values in \mathbb{Q}[X] . We deduce from the interacting bialgebras an algebraic proof of the duality principle, a generalization and a new proof of a result on B-series due to Whright and Zhao, using a monoid of characters on quasi-posets, and a generalization of Faulhaber’s formula. We also give non-commutative versions of these results, where polynomials are replaced by packed words. We obtain, in particular, a non-commutative duality principle.

Proof of Chapoton's Conjecture on Newton Polygons of $q$-Ehrhart Polynomials

Recently, Chapoton found a $q$-analog of Ehrhart polynomials, which are polynomials in $x$ whose coefficients are rational functions in $q$. Chapoton conjectured the shape of the Newton polygon of the numerator of the $q$-Ehrhart polynomial of an order polytope. In this paper, we prove Chapoton's conjecture.

On Ehrhart Polynomials of Lattice Triangles

The Ehrhart polynomial of a lattice polygon $P$ is completely determined by the pair $(b(P),i(P))$ where $b(P)$ equals the number of lattice points on the boundary and $i(P)$ equals the number of interior lattice points. All possible pairs $(b(P),i(P))$ are completely described by a theorem due to Scott. In this note, we describe the shape of the set of pairs $(b(T),i(T))$ for lattice triangles $T$ by finding infinitely many new Scott-type inequalities.

Mixed Ehrhart polynomials

For lattice polytopes $P_1,\ldots, P_k \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$, Bihan (2016) introduced the discrete mixed volume $DMV(P_1,\dots,P_k)$ in analogy to the classical mixed volume. In this note we study the associated mixed Ehrhart polynomial $ME_{P_1, \dots,P_k}(n) = DMV(nP_1, \dots, nP_k)$. We provide a characterization of all mixed Ehrhart coefficients in terms of the classical multivariate Ehrhart polynomial. Bihan (2016) showed that the discrete mixed volume is always non-negative. Our investigations yield simpler proofs for certain special cases.We also introduce and study the associated mixed $h^*$-vector. We show that for large enough dilates $r P_1, \ldots, rP_k$ the corresponding mixed $h^*$-polynomial has only real roots and as a consequence the mixed $h^*$-vector becomes non-negative.