Hodge Theory for Combinatorial Geometries

Understand

We prove the hard Lefschetz theorem and the Hodge-Riemann relations for a commutative ring associated to an arbitrary matroid M.

• We use the Hodge-Riemann relations to resolve a conjecture of Heron, Rota, and Welsh that postulates the log-concavity of the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of M.
• We furthermore conclude that the f-vector of the independence complex of a matroid forms a log-concave sequence, proving a conjecture of Mason and Welsh for general matroids.