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Alex Fink

Publications and source records attributed to Alex Fink.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Characterisations of strong $\Delta$-matroids

We study characterisations of strong $\Delta$-matroids, compiling a list of five equivalent descriptions. We show a variant of Wenzel's exchange property and the hyperplane exchange property of Borovik-Gelfand-White are equivalent. We also introduce two novel characterisations in terms of 'peerless' and 'isolated' antipodes within the system of feasible sets, banning certain configurations of antipodes either globally or locally. As a corollary, we obtain new 'local' exchange axioms for matroids and $\Delta$-matroids. We give algebraic motivation for these new characterisations by introducing the peerless antipode equations, tropical equations that govern whether a $\Delta$-matroid has no peerless antipodes. We show that these arise as the tropicalisation of a specific basis of quadratics cutting out the orthogonal Grassmannian.

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arXiv2026

Counting point configurations in projective space

We investigate the enumerative geometry of point configurations in projective space. We define "projective configuration counts": these enumerate configurations of points in projective space such that certain specified subsets are in fixed relative positions. The $\mathbb{P}^1$ case recovers cross-ratio degrees, which arise naturally in numerous contexts. We establish two main results. The first is a combinatorial upper bound given by the number of weighted transversals of a bipartite graph. The second is a recursion that relates counts associated to projective spaces of different dimensions, by projecting away from a given point. Key inputs include the Gelfand-MacPherson correspondence, the Jacobi-Trudi and Thom-Porteous formulae, and the notion of surplus from matching theory of bipartite graphs.

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arXiv2025

Quadratic exchange equations for Coxeter matroids

Tropicalisation (with trivial coefficients) is a process that turns a polynomial equation into a combinatorial predicate on subsets of the set of variables. We show that for each minuscule representation of a simple reductive group, there is a set of quadratic equations cutting out the orbit of the highest weight vector whose tropicalisation characterises the set of Coxeter matroids for that representation which satisfy the strong exchange property.

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arXiv2025

Vanishing theorems for combinatorial geometries

We establish strong vanishing theorems for line bundles on wonderful varieties of hyperplane arrangements, and we show that the resulting positivity properties of Euler characteristics extend to all matroids. We achieve this by showing that every degeneration of a wonderful variety within the permutohedral toric variety is reduced and Cohen--Macaulay. The same holds for a larger class of subschemes in products of projective lines that we call "kindred," which are characterized by matroidal Hilbert polynomials. Our results give a new proof of the 20-year-old f-vector conjecture of Speyer and resolve the conjecture of Tohaneanu that higher order Orlik--Terao algebras are Cohen--Macaulay.

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arXiv2025

The polytope of all matroids

It is possible to write the indicator function of any matroid polytope as an integer combination of indicator functions of Schubert matroid polytopes. In this way, every matroid on $n$ elements of rank $r$ can be thought of as a lattice point in the space having a coordinate for each Schubert matroid on $n$ elements of rank $r$. We study the convex hull of all these lattice points, with particular focus on the vertices, which come from the matroids we call extremal matroids. We show that several famous classes of matroids arise as faces of the polytopes, and in many cases we determine the dimension of this face explicitly. As an application, we show that there exist valuative invariants that attain non-negative values at all representable matroids, but fail to be non-negative in general.

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arXiv2024

The external activity complex of a pair of matroids

We introduce the Schubert variety of a pair of linear subspaces in $\mathbf{C}^n$ and the external activity complex of a pair of not necessarily realizable matroids. Both of these generalize constructions of Ardila et al., which occur when one of the linear spaces is one-dimensional. We prove that our external activity complex is Cohen-Macaulay and deduce a formula for its $K$-polynomial in terms of exterior powers of the dual tautological quotient classes of matroids. As a consequence, we deduce a non-negative formula for the matroid invariant $\omega(M)$ of Fink, Shaw, and Speyer in terms of certain homology groups of links within an external activity complex, proving the 2005 tropical $f$-vector conjecture of Speyer.

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arXiv2024

The omega invariant of a matroid

The third author introduced the $g$-polynomial $g_M(t)$ of a matroid, a covaluative matroid statistic which is unchanged under series and parallel extension. The $g$-polynomial of a rank $r$ matroid $M$ has the form $g_1 t + g_2 t^2 + \cdots + g_r t^r$. The coefficient $g_1$ is Crapo's classical $\beta$-invariant. In this paper, we study the coefficient $g_r$, which we term the $\omega$-invariant of $M$. We show that, if $M/F$ is connected for every proper flat $F$ of $M$, and $\omega(N)$ is nonnegative for every minor $N$ of $M$, then all the coefficients of $g_M(t)$ are nonnegative. We give several simplified versions of Ferroni's formula for $\omega(M)$, and compute $\omega(M)$ when $r$ or $|E(M)|-2r$ is small.

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arXiv2024

Projective hypersurfaces in tropical scheme theory I: the Macaulay ideal

A "tropical ideal" is an ideal in the idempotent semiring of tropical polynomials that is also, degree by degree, a tropical linear space. We introduce a construction based on transversal matroids that canonically extends any principal ideal to a tropical ideal. We call this the Macaulay tropical ideal. It has a universal property: any other extension of the given principal ideal to a tropical ideal with the expected Hilbert function is a weak image of the Macaulay tropical ideal. For each $n\geq 2$ and $d\geq 1$ our construction yields a non-realizable degree $d$ hypersurface scheme in $\mathbb{P}^n$. Maclagan-Rinc\'on produced a non-realizable line in $\mathbb{P}^n$ for each $n$, and for $(d,n)=(1,2)$ the two constructions agree. An appendix by Mundinger compares the Macaulay construction with another method for canonically extending ideals to tropical ideals.

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arXiv2023

Extensions of transversal valuated matroids

Following up on our previous work, we study single-element extensions of transversal valuated matroids. We show that tropical presentations of valuated matroids with a minimal set of finite entries enjoy counterparts of the properties proved by Bonin and de Mier of minimal non-valuated transversal presentations.

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arXiv2022

Signed permutohedra, delta-matroids, and beyond

We establish a connection between the algebraic geometry of the type B permutohedral toric variety and the combinatorics of delta-matroids. Using this connection, we compute the volume and lattice point counts of type B generalized permutohedra. Applying tropical Hodge theory to a new framework of "tautological classes of delta-matroids," modeled after certain vector bundles associated to realizable delta-matroids, we establish the log-concavity of a Tutte-like invariant for a broad family of delta-matroids that includes all realizable delta-matroids. Our results include new log-concavity statements for all (ordinary) matroids as special cases.

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arXiv2021

Matroids and the space of torus-invariant subvarieties of the Grassmannian with given homology class

Let $\mathbb{G}(d,n)$ be the complex Grassmannian of affine $d$-planes in $n$-space. We study the problem of characterizing the set of algebraic subvarieties of $\mathbb{G}(d,n)$ invariant under the action of the maximal torus $T$ and having given homology class $\lambda$. We give a complete answer for the case where $\lambda$ is the class of a $T$-orbit, and partial results for other cases, using techniques inspired by matroid theory. This problem has applications to the computation of the Euler-Chow series for Grassmannians of projective lines: we calculate the series for 3-cycles in $\mathbb{G}(2,4)$ and carry out partial calculations for $\mathbb{G}(2,5)$.

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arXiv2021

Gr\"obner bases, symmetric matrices, and type C Kazhdan-Lusztig varieties

We study a class of combinatorially-defined polynomial ideals which are generated by minors of a generic symmetric matrix. Included within this class are the symmetric determinantal ideals, the symmetric ladder determinantal ideals, and the symmetric Schubert determinantal ideals of A. Fink, J. Rajchgot, and S. Sullivant. Each ideal in our class is a type C analog of a Kazhdan-Lusztig ideal of A. Woo and A. Yong; that is, it is the scheme-theoretic defining ideal of the intersection of a type C Schubert variety with a type C opposite Schubert cell, appropriately coordinatized. The Kazhdan-Lusztig ideals that arise are exactly those where the opposite cell is $123$-avoiding. Our main results include Gr\"obner bases for these ideals, prime decompositions of their initial ideals (which are Stanley-Reisner ideals of subword complexes) and combinatorial formulas for their multigraded Hilbert series in terms of pipe dreams.

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arXiv2019

Equivariant K-theory classes of matrix orbit closures

The group $G = GL_r(k) \times (k^\times)^n$ acts on $\mathbf{A}^{r \times n}$, the space of $r$-by-$n$ matrices: $GL_r(k)$ acts by row operations and $(k^\times)^n$ scales columns. A matrix orbit closure is the Zariski closure of a point orbit for this action. We prove that the class of such an orbit closure in $G$ equivariant $K$-theory of $\mathbf{A}^{r \times n}$ is determined by the matroid of a generic point. We present two formulas for this class. The key to the proof is to show that matrix orbit closures have rational singularities.

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arXiv2019

Zero-one Schubert polynomials

We prove that if $\sigma \in S_m$ is a pattern of $w \in S_n$, then we can express the Schubert polynomial $\mathfrak{S}_w$ as a monomial times $\mathfrak{S}_\sigma$ (in reindexed variables) plus a polynomial with nonnegative coefficients. This implies that the set of permutations whose Schubert polynomials have all their coefficients equal to either 0 or 1 is closed under pattern containment. Using Magyar's orthodontia, we characterize this class by a list of twelve avoided patterns. We also give other equivalent conditions on $\mathfrak{S}_w$ being zero-one. In this case, the Schubert polynomial $\mathfrak{S}_w$ is equal to the integer point transform of a generalized permutahedron.

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arXiv2019

Presentations of Transversal Valuated Matroids

Given $d$ row vectors of $n$ tropical numbers, $d<n$, the tropical Stiefel map constructs a version of their row space, whose Pl\"ucker coordinates are tropical determinants. We explicitly describe the fibers of this map. From the viewpoint of matroid theory, the tropical Stiefel map defines a generalization of transversal matroids in the valuated context, and our results are the valuated generalizations of theorems of Brualdi and Dinolt, Mason and others on the set of all set families that present a given transversal matroid. We show that a connected valuated matroid is transversal if and only if all of its connected initial matroids are. The duals of our results describe complete stable intersections via valuated strict gammoids.

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arXiv2018

The Tutte polynomial via lattice point counting

We recover the Tutte polynomial of a matroid, up to change of coordinates, from an Ehrhart-style polynomial counting lattice points in the Minkowski sum of its base polytope and scalings of simplices. Our polynomial has coefficients of alternating sign with a combinatorial interpretation closely tied to the Dawson partition. Our definition extends in a straightforward way to polymatroids, and in this setting our polynomial has K\'alm\'an's internal and external activity polynomials as its univariate specialisations.

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arXiv2017

Universal Tutte characters via combinatorial coalgebras

The Tutte polynomial is the most general invariant of matroids and graphs that can be computed recursively by deleting and contracting edges. We generalize this invariant to any class of combinatorial objects with deletion and contraction operations, associating to each such class a universal Tutte character by a functorial procedure. We show that these invariants satisfy a universal property and convolution formulae similar to the Tutte polynomial. With this machinery we recover classical invariants for delta-matroids, matroid perspectives, relative and colored matroids, generalized permutohedra, and arithmetic matroids, and produce some new convolution formulae. Our principal tools are combinatorial coalgebras and their convolution algebras. Our results generalize in an intrinsic way the recent results of Krajewski--Moffatt--Tanasa.

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