The classes of sums of arithmetic-geometric exponentials (SAGE) and of sums of nonnegative circuit polynomials (SONC) provide nonnegativity certificates which are based on the inequality of the arithmetic and geometric means. We study the cones of symmetric SAGE and SONC forms and their relations to the underlying symmetric nonnegative cone. As main results, we provide several symmetric cases where the SAGE or SONC property coincides with nonnegativity and we present quantitative results on the differences in various situations. The results rely on characterizations of the zeroes and the minimizers for symmetric SAGE and SONC forms, which we develop. Finally, we also study symmetric monomial mean inequalities and apply SONC certificates to establish a generalized version of Muirhead's inequality.

Abstract We introduce greedy weights of matroids, inspired by those for linear codes. We show that a Wei duality holds for two of these types of greedy weights for matroids. Moreover we show that in the cases where the matroids involved are associated to linear codes, our definitions coincide with those for codes. Thus our Wei duality is a generalization of that for linear codes given by Schaathun. In the last part of the paper we show how some important chains of cycles of the matroids appearing, correspond to chains of component maps of minimal resolutions of the independence complex of the corresponding matroids. We also relate properties of these resolutions to chainedness and greedy weights of the matroids, and in many cases codes, that appear.

Abstract We study how some coefficients of two-variable coboundary polynomials can be derived from Betti numbers of Stanley–Reisner rings. We also explain how the connection with these Stanley–Reisner rings forces the coefficients of the two-variable coboundary polynomials and Möbius polynomials to satisfy certain universal equations.

An ideal of polynomials is symmetric if it is closed under permutations of variables. We relate general symmetric ideals to the so called Specht ideals generated by all Specht polynomials of a given shape. We show a connection between the leading monomials of polynomials in the ideal and the Specht polynomials contained in the ideal. This provides applications in several contexts. Most notably, this connection gives information about the solutions of the corresponding set of equations. From another perspective, it restricts the isotypic decomposition of the ideal viewed as a representation of the symmetric group.

We study q-ary linear codes C obtained from Veronese surfaces over finite fields. We show how one can find the higher weight spectra of these codes, or equivalently, the weight distribution of all extension codes of C over all field extensions of Fq. Our methods will be a study of the Stanley-Reisner rings of a series of matroids associated to each code C.

We define generalized Hamming weights for almost affine codes. We show that this definition is natural, since we can extend some well-known properties of the generalized Hamming weights for linear codes, to almost affine codes. In addition, we discuss the duality of almost affine codes, and of the smaller class of multilinear codes.