Matroid-minor Hopf algebra: a cancellation-free antipode formula and other applications of sign-reversing involutions

Abstract

In this paper, we give a cancellation-free antipode formula for the matroid-minor Hopf algebra. We then explore applications of this formula. For example, the cancellation-free formula expresses the antipode of uniform matroids as a sum over certain ordered set partitions. We also prove that all matroids over any hyperfield (in the sense of Baker and Bowler) have cancellation-free antipode formulas; furthermore, the cancellations in the antipode are independent of the hyperfield structure and only depend on the underlying matroid.