Characteristic numbers and chromatic polynomial of a tensor

Abstract

We introduce the characteristic numbers and the chromatic polynomial of a tensor. Our approach generalizes and unifies the chromatic polynomial of a graph and of a matroid, characteristic numbers of quadrics in Schubert calculus, Betti numbers of complements of hyperplane arrangements and Euler characteristic of complements of determinantal hypersurfaces and the maximum likelihood degree for general linear concentration models in algebraic statistics.