EHRHART THEORY OF MATROID POLYTOPES

Matroids are combinatorial structures that admit several "cryptomorphic" definitions. It is possible to define matroids as a certain kind of polytopes with vertices with 0/1-coordinates. Also, for every lattice polytope, the function counting the number of integer points inside of every integral dilation is known to be a polynomial, named after Eugene Ehrhart. In this seminar we will talk about the Ehrhart polynomials of matroid polytopes. We will discuss some open problems and recent results on the area, using just minimal prerequisites.