English

Oriented cobicircular matroids are $GSP$

Combinatorics 2024-04-03 v1

Abstract

Colourings and flows are well-known dual notions in Graph Theory. In turn, the definition of flows in graphs naturally extends to flows in oriented matroids. So, the colour-flow duality gives a generalization of Hadwiger's conjecture about graph colourings, to a conjecture about coflows of oriented matroids. The first non-trivial case of Hadwiger's conjecture for oriented matroids reads as follows. If O\mathcal{O} is an M(K4)M(K_4)-minor free oriented matroid, then O\mathcal{O} has a now-where 33-coflow, i.e., it is 33-colourable in the sense of Hochst\"attler-Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il. The class of generalized series parallel (GSPGSP) oriented matroids is a class of 33-colourable oriented matroids with no M(K4)M(K_4)-minor. So far, the only technique towards proving that all orientations of a class C\mathcal{C} of M(K4)M(K_4)-minor free matroids are GSPGSP (and thus 33-colourable), has been to show that every matroid in C\mathcal{C} has a positive coline. Towards proving Hadwiger's conjecture for the class of gammoids, Goddyn, Hochst\"attler, and Neudauer conjectured that every gammoid has a positive coline. In this work we disprove this conjecture by exhibiting an infinite class of strict gammoids that do not have positive colines. We conclude by proposing a simpler technique for showing that certain oriented matroids are GSPGSP. In particular, we recover that oriented lattice path matroids are GSPGSP, and we show that oriented cobicircular matroids are GSPGSP.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.06591,
  title  = {Oriented cobicircular matroids are $GSP$},
  author = {Santiago Guzmán-Pro and Winfried Hochstättler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.06591},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

This work is an extension of our previous pre-print: arXiv:2203.12549

R2 v1 2026-06-28T01:16:48.551Z