The Euler characteristic, $q$-matroids, and a Möbius function

Abstract

We first give two new proofs of an old result that the reduced Euler characteristic of a matroid complex is equal to the Möbius number of the lattice of cycles of the matroid up to the sign. The purpose has been to find a model to establish an analogous result for the case of $q$-matroids and we find a relation between the Euler characteristic of the simplicial chain complex associated to a $q$-matroid complex and the lattice of $q$-cycles of the $q$-matroid. We use this formula to find the complete homology over $\mathbb{Z}$ of this shellable simplicial complex. We give a characterization of nonzero Euler characteristic for such order complexes. Finally, based on these results we remark why singular homology of a $q$-matroid equipped with order topology may not be effective to describe the $q$-cycles unlike the classical case of matroids.