Coefficients of univariate Tutte polynomials with one variable fixed

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ma, Tianlong, Guan, Xiaxia, Jin, Xian'an
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ma, Tianlong
Guan, Xiaxia
Jin, Xian'an
author_facet Ma, Tianlong
Guan, Xiaxia
Jin, Xian'an
contents It is well known that the 2-variable Tutte polynomials contain chromatic polynomial and flow polynomial of graphs, i.e. the cases of $y=0$ and $x=0$. In 2013, Kálmán introduced the interior and exterior polynomials which generalized the cases of $y=1$ and $x=1$ of Tutte polynomials of graphs to hypergraphs, and further polymatroids. There have been some results on coefficients of these polynomials, which motivate us to study uniformly the coefficients of $T_M(x,t)$ and $T_M(t,y)$, where $M$ is a matroid and $t$ is a fixed real number. In this paper, we introduce two mutually dual parameters $f_k(M)$ and $g_k(M)$ ($g_1(M)$ is the grith of $M$) for any nonnegative integer $k$, obtaining: (1) Formulas for coefficients of the higher-degree terms (related to $g_2(M)$ and $f_2(M)$, respectively) of $T_M(x,t)$ and $T_M(t,y)$ in terms of circuits and hyperplanes of $M$; (2) when $0\leq t \leq 1$, coefficients of the more higher-degree terms (related to $g_1(M)$ and $f_1(M)$, respectively) of $T_M(x,t)$ and $T_M(t,y)$ are further simplified and characterized; (3) As applications, some known results in the cases $t=0$ and $t=1$ are derived and generalized, and the unimodality of these coefficients in (1) are proved when $t\leq 1$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_06095
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Coefficients of univariate Tutte polynomials with one variable fixed
Ma, Tianlong
Guan, Xiaxia
Jin, Xian'an
Combinatorics
05C31, 05B35
It is well known that the 2-variable Tutte polynomials contain chromatic polynomial and flow polynomial of graphs, i.e. the cases of $y=0$ and $x=0$. In 2013, Kálmán introduced the interior and exterior polynomials which generalized the cases of $y=1$ and $x=1$ of Tutte polynomials of graphs to hypergraphs, and further polymatroids. There have been some results on coefficients of these polynomials, which motivate us to study uniformly the coefficients of $T_M(x,t)$ and $T_M(t,y)$, where $M$ is a matroid and $t$ is a fixed real number. In this paper, we introduce two mutually dual parameters $f_k(M)$ and $g_k(M)$ ($g_1(M)$ is the grith of $M$) for any nonnegative integer $k$, obtaining: (1) Formulas for coefficients of the higher-degree terms (related to $g_2(M)$ and $f_2(M)$, respectively) of $T_M(x,t)$ and $T_M(t,y)$ in terms of circuits and hyperplanes of $M$; (2) when $0\leq t \leq 1$, coefficients of the more higher-degree terms (related to $g_1(M)$ and $f_1(M)$, respectively) of $T_M(x,t)$ and $T_M(t,y)$ are further simplified and characterized; (3) As applications, some known results in the cases $t=0$ and $t=1$ are derived and generalized, and the unimodality of these coefficients in (1) are proved when $t\leq 1$.
title Coefficients of univariate Tutte polynomials with one variable fixed
topic Combinatorics
05C31, 05B35
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06095