Simplicial generation of Chow rings of matroids

Abstract: We introduce a presentation of the Chow ring of a matroid by a new set of generators, called "simplicial generators." These generators are analogous to nef divisors on projective toric varieties, and admit a combinatorial interpretation via the theory of matroid quotients. Using this combinatorial interpretation, we (i) produce a bijection between a monomial basis of the Chow ring and a relative generalization of Schubert matroids, (ii) recover the Poincar\'e duality property, (iii) give a formula for the volume polynomial, which we show is log-concave in the positive orthant, and (iv) recover the validity of Hodge-Riemann relations in degree 1, which is the part of the Hodge theory of matroids that currently accounts for all combinatorial applications of [AHK18]. Our work avoids the use of "flips," the key technical tool employed in [AHK18].