Chow rings and augmented Chow rings of uniform matroids and their $q$-analogs

Abstract: We study the Hilbert series and the representations of $\mathfrak{S}n$ and $GL_n(\mathbb{F}_q)$ on the (augmented) Chow rings of uniform matroids $U{r,n}$ and $q$-uniform matroids $U_{r,n}(q)$. The Frobenius series for uniform matroids and their $q$-analogs are computed. As a byproduct, we recover Hameister, Rao, and Simpson's formula for the Hilbert series of Chow rings of $q$-uniform matroids in terms of permutations and further obtain their augmented counterpart in terms of decorated permutations. We also show that the equivariant Charney--Davis quantity of the (augmented) Chow ring of a matroid is nonnegative (i.e., a genuine representation of a group of automorphisms of the matroid). When the matroid is a uniform matroid and the group is $\mathfrak{S}_n$, the representation either vanishes or is a Foulkes representation (i.e., a Specht module of a ribbon shape). Specializing to the usual Charney--Davis quantities, we obtain an elegant combinatorial interpretation of Hameister, Rao, and Simpson's formula for Chow rings of $q$-uniform matroids and its augmented counterpart.