TGiF-Seminar: Tropical geometry in Frankfurt (Second meeting Winter Semester 2023/24)

Manoel Zanoelo Jarra (Universität Groningen)

Abstract: Matroids are combinatorial abstractions of the concept of independence in linear algebra. There is a way back: when representing a matroid over a field we get a linear subspace. Another algebraic object for which we can represent matroids is the semifield of tropical numbers, which gives us valuated matroids. In this talk we introduce Baker-Bowler’s theory of matroids with coefficients, which recovers both classical and valuated matroids, as well linear subspaces, and we show how to give a categorical treatment to these objects that respects matroidal constructions, as minors and duality. This is a joint work with Oliver Lorscheid and Eduardo Vital.