The Chow and augmented Chow polynomials of uniform matroids

Abstract

We provide explicit combinatorial formulas for the Chow polynomial and for the augmented Chow polynomial of uniform matroids, thereby proving a conjecture by Ferroni. These formulas refine existing formulas by Hampe and by Eur, Huh, and Larson, offering a combinatorial interpretation of the coefficients based on Schubert matroids. As a byproduct, we count Schubert matroids by rank, number of loops, and cogirth.