English

Coloring the intersection of two matroids

Combinatorics 2025-04-25 v2 Algebraic Topology

Abstract

A result [The intersection of a matroid and a simplicial complex, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 358] from 2006 of Aharoni and the first author of this paper states that for any two positive integers p,qp,q, where pp divides qq, if a matroid M\mathcal{M} is pp-colorable and a matroid N\mathcal{N} is qq-colorable then MN\mathcal{M} \cap \mathcal{N} is (p+q)(p+q)-colorable. In this paper we show that the assumption that pp divides qq is in fact redundant, and we also prove that MN\mathcal{M} \cap \mathcal{N} is even p+qp+q list-colorable. The result uses topology and relies on a new parameter yielding a lower bound for the topological connectivity of the intersection of two matroids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.09160,
  title  = {Coloring the intersection of two matroids},
  author = {Eli Berger and He Guo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.09160},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

8 pages; minor edits; to appear in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:38:29.387Z