English

On minor-closed classes of matroids with exponential growth rate

Combinatorics 2011-11-01 v1

Abstract

Let \cM\cM be a minor-closed class of matroids that does not contain arbitrarily long lines. The growth rate function, h:\bN\bNh:\bN\rightarrow \bN of \cM\cM is given by h(n) = \max(|M|\, : \, M\in \cM, simple, rank-$n$). The Growth Rate Theorem shows that there is an integer cc such that either: h(n)cnh(n)\le c\, n, or (n+12)h(n)cn2{n+1 \choose 2} \le h(n)\le c\, n^2, or there is a prime-power qq such that qn1q1h(n)cqn\frac{q^n-1}{q-1} \le h(n) \le c\, q^n; this separates classes into those of linear density, quadratic density, and base-qq exponential density. For classes of base-qq exponential density that contain no (q2+1)(q^2+1)-point line, we prove that h(n)=qn1q1h(n) =\frac{q^n-1}{q-1} for all sufficiently large nn. We also prove that, for classes of base-qq exponential density that contain no (q2+q+1)(q^2+q+1)-point line, there exists k\bNk\in\bN such that h(n)=qn+k1q1qq2k1q21h(n) = \frac{q^{n+k}-1}{q-1} - q\frac{q^{2k}-1}{q^2-1} for all sufficiently large nn.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1110.6668,
  title  = {On minor-closed classes of matroids with exponential growth rate},
  author = {Jim Geelen and Peter Nelson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1110.6668},
  year   = {2011}
}