Lorenzo Vecchi (KTH Stockholm) - Categorical valuative invariants of matroids

In this talk we define a new category of matroids, by working on matroid polytopes and rank preserving weak maps. This lets us introduce the concept of categorical valuativity for functors, which can be seen as a categorification of the ordinary valuativity for matroid invariants.

We also show that this new theory agrees with what we know about valuative polynomials: several known valuative polynomials can be seen as a Hilbert series of some graded vector space and we prove that these graded vector spaces let us define a valuative functor in the new sense. 

Lastly, we sketch how to categorify a Theorem by Ardila and Sanchez, which states that the convolution of two valuative invariants (respectively, valuative functors) is again valuative.

This is based on a joint ongoing project with Ben Elias, Dane Miyata and Nicholas Proudfoot.