Induced Lorentzian and volume polynomials

Abstract

Suppose one has a party of $m$ people, whose expertise collectively covers $n$ topics. Given a subset $T$ of the topics, one wishes to form a panel of $|T|$ people from the party such that $T$ can be covered by assigning a distinct topic to each panel member with the expertise. We show that the numbers of such panels, as $T$ varies, form a Lorentzian polynomial. We achieve this by showing that a certain linear operator on polynomials, which we call the ``inducing operator'' for its connection to induced (poly)matroids, preserves Lorentzian polynomials and realizable volume polynomials.

8 pages, 2 figures. Comments welcome