Solvable and Nilpotent Matroids: Realizability and Irreducible Decomposition of Their Associated Varieties

Abstract: We introduce the families of solvable and nilpotent matroids, examining their realization spaces, closures, and associated matroid and circuit varieties. We establish sufficient conditions for both the realizability of these matroids and the irreducibility of their associated varieties. Additionally, we analyze the defining polynomial equations of these varieties using Grassmann-Cayley algebra and geometric liftability techniques. For several families within these matroid types, we provide a complete set of defining equations for matroid varieties, or equivalently, a finite generating set for their associated matroid ideals. This includes forest configurations, and a subfamily of nilpotent matroids, called weak nilpotent matroids, which may have arbitrary rank.