Ehrhart polynomials of rank two matroids

Luis Ferroni, Katharina Jochemko, Benjamin Schröter

Abstract: Over a decade ago De Loera, Haws and Köppe conjectured that Ehrhart polynomials of matroid polytopes have only positive coefficients and that the coefficients of the corresponding ⁎h⁎<math><msup is="true"><mrow is="true"><mi is="true">h</mi></mrow><mrow is="true"><mo is="true">⁎</mo></mrow></msup></math>-polynomials form a unimodal sequence. The first of these intensively studied conjectures has recently been disproved by the first author who gave counterexamples in all ranks greater than or equal to three. In this article we complete the picture by showing that Ehrhart polynomials of matroids of lower rank have indeed only positive coefficients. Moreover, we show that they are coefficient-wise bounded by the Ehrhart polynomials of minimal and uniform matroids. We furthermore address the second conjecture by proving that ⁎h⁎<math><msup is="true"><mrow is="true"><mi is="true">h</mi></mrow><mrow is="true"><mo is="true">⁎</mo></mrow></msup></math>-polynomials of matroid polytopes of sparse paving matroids of rank two are real-rooted and therefore have log-concave and unimodal coefficients. In particular, this shows that the ⁎h⁎<math><msup is="true"><mrow is="true"><mi is="true">h</mi></mrow><mrow is="true"><mo is="true">⁎</mo></mrow></msup></math>-polynomial of the second hypersimplex is real-rooted, thereby strengthening a result of De Loera, Haws and Köppe.