Given a matroid M = (E,I), and a total ordering over the elements E, a broken circuit is a circuit where the smallest element is removed and an NBC independent set is an independent set in I with no broken circuit. The set of NBC independent sets of any matroid M define a simplicial complex called the broken circuit complex which has been the subject of intense study in combinatorics. Recently, Adiprasito, Huh and Katz showed that the face of numbers of any broken circuit complex form a log-concave sequence, proving a long-standing conjecture of Rota. We study counting and optimization problems on NBC bases of a generic matroid. We find several fundamental differences with the independent set complex: for example, we show that it is NP-hard to find the max-weight NBC base of a matroid or that the convex hull of NBC bases of a matroid has edges of arbitrary large length. We also give evidence that the natural down-up walk on the space of NBC bases of a matroid may not mix rapidly by showing that for some family of matroids it is NP-hard to count the number of NBC bases after certain conditionings.

A matroid $\mathcal{M}$ on a set $E$ of elements has the $α$-partition property, for some $α>0$, if it is possible to (randomly) construct a partition matroid $\mathcal{P}$ on (a subset of) elements of $\mathcal{M}$ such that every independent set of $\mathcal{P}$ is independent in $\mathcal{M}$ and for any weight function $w:E\to\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}$, the expected value of the optimum of the matroid secretary problem on $\mathcal{P}$ is at least an $α$-fraction of the optimum on $\mathcal{M}$. We show that the complete binary matroid, ${\cal B}_d$ on $\mathbb{F}_2^d$ does not satisfy the $α$-partition property for any constant $α>0$ (independent of $d$). Furthermore, we refute a recent conjecture of Bérczi, Schwarcz, and Yamaguchi by showing the same matroid is $2^d/d$-colorable but cannot be reduced to an $α2^d/d$-colorable partition matroid for any $α$ that is sublinear in $d$.

We show that the natural Glauber dynamics mixes rapidly and generates a random proper edge-coloring of a graph with maximum degree$\Delta$whenever the number of colors is at least$q\geq(\frac{10}{3}+\epsilon)\Delta$, where$\epsilon > 0$is arbitrary and the maximum degree satisfies$\Delta\geq C$for a constant$C=C(\epsilon)$depending only on$\epsilon$, For edge-colorings, this improves upon prior work [Vig99; Che+19] which show rapid mixing when$q\geq(\frac{11}{3}-\epsilon_{0})\Delta$, where$\epsilon_{0}\approx 10^{-5}$is a small fixed constant. At the heart of our proof, we establish a matrix trickle-down theorem, generalizing Oppenheim's influential result, as a new technique to prove that a high dimensional simplicial complex is a local spectral expander.