Chromatic symmetric functions from the modular law

Abstract

In this article we show how to compute the chromatic quasisymmetric function of indifference graphs from the modular law introduced by Guay-Paquet. We provide an algorithm which works for any function that satisfies this law, such as unicellular LLT polynomials. When the indifference graph has bipartite complement it reduces to a planar network, in this case, we prove that the coefficients of the chromatic quasisymmetric function in the elementary basis are positive unimodal polynomials and characterize them as certain $q$-hit numbers (up to a factor). Finally, we discuss the logarithmic concavity of the coefficients of the chromatic quasisymmetric function.