Geometry & Topology Seminar

Jeremy Usatine, Brown University

"Gromov-Witten theory and invariants of matroids"

Matroids are versatile combinatorial objects with deep connections to many subjects, including chromatic polynomials of graphs, arrangements of vectors and hyperplanes, and the geometry of Grassmannians. I will discuss joint work with Dhruv Ranganathan in which we use Gromov-Witten theory to associate new invariants to matroids. In particular, I will explain how to obtain a canonical (independent of chosen realization) quantum deformation of any realizable matroid's cohomology ring.

MC 5417