Multipath matroids, digraph colourings, and the Tutte polynomial

Abstract

We characterise the digraphs for which the multipaths, that is disjoint unions of directed paths, yield a matroid. For such graphs, called MP-digraphs, we prove that the Tutte polynomial of the multipath matroid is related to counting certain digraph colourings. Finally, we prove that, for MP-forests, the decategorification of the multipath cohomology yields a specialisation of the Tutte polynomial.