Related papers: Stability, fragility, and Rota's Conjecture

We prove decidability of the boundedness problem for monadic least fixed-point recursion based on positive monadic second-order (MSO) formulae over trees. Given an MSO-formula phi(X,x) that is positive in X, it is decidable whether the…

We consider the problem of determining $m_n$, the number of matroids on $n$ elements. The best known lower bound on $m_n$ is due to Knuth (1974) who showed that $\log \log m_n$ is at least $n-3/2\log n-1$. On the other hand, Piff (1973)…

We study the combinatorial, algebraic and geometric properties of the free product operation on matroids. After giving cryptomorphic definitions of free product in terms of independent sets, bases, circuits, closure, flats and rank…

The generalized Lax conjecture asserts that each hyperbolicity cone is a linear slice of the cone of positive semidefinite matrices. Hyperbolic polynomials give rise to a class of (hyperbolic) matroids which properly contains the class of…

The {\em breadth} of a tangle $\mathcal{T}$ in a matroid is the size of the largest spanning uniform submatroid of the tangle matroid of $\mathcal{T}$. A matroid $M$ is {\em weakly $4$-connected} if it is 3-connected and whenever $(X,Y)$ is…

We prove that, for each nonnegative integer k and each matroid N, if M is a 3-connected matroid containing N as a minor, and the the branch width of M is sufficiently large, then there is a k-element subset X of E(M) such that one of M\X…

We give a new proof, along with some generalizations, of a folklore theorem (attributed to Laurent Lafforgue) that a rigid matroid (i.e., a matroid with indecomposable basis polytope) has only finitely many projective equivalence classes of…

We investigate entropy minimization problems for quantum states subject to convex block-separable constraints. Our principal result is a quantitative stability theorem: under a natural confining (fixed-support) hypothesis, if a state has…

It is well known that a matroid L is a lift of a matroid M if and only if every circuit of L is the union of some circuits of M. In this paper we give a simpler proof of this important theorem. We also described a discrete homotopy theorem…

We partition in classes the set of matroids of fixed dimension on a fixed vertex set. In each class we identify two special matroids, respectively with minimal and maximal h-vector in that class. Such extremal matroids also satisfy a…

Let S $\subseteq$ N be a numerical semigroup with multiplicity m = min(S \ {0}), conductor c = max(N \ S) + 1 and minimally generated by e elements. Let L be the set of elements of S which are smaller than c. Wilf conjectured in 1978 that…

We argue that M-theory compactified on an arbitrary genus-one fibration, that is, an elliptic fibration which need not have a section, always has an F-theory limit when the area of the genus-one fiber approaches zero. Such genus-one…

Given a matroid $M=(E,{\cal I})$, and a total ordering over the elements $E$, a broken circuit is a circuit where the smallest element is removed and an NBC independent set is an independent set in ${\cal I}$ with no broken circuit. The set…

Motivated by the work of Anstee, Griggs, and Sali on forbidden submatrices and the extremal sat-function for graphs, we introduce sat-type problems for matrices. Let F be a family of k-row matrices. A matrix M is called F-admissible if M…

Las Vergnas Cube Conjecture states that the cube matroid has exactly one class of orientations. We prove that this conjecture is equivalent to saying that the oriented matroid of the affine dependencies of the n-cube can be reconstructed…

We show that for any regular matroid on $m$ elements and any $\alpha \geq 1$, the number of $\alpha$-minimum circuits, or circuits whose size is at most an $\alpha$-multiple of the minimum size of a circuit in the matroid is bounded by…

Let A be a commutative ring, and let \a = \frak{a} be a finitely generated ideal in it. It is known that a necessary and sufficient condition for the derived \a-torsion and \a-adic completion functors to be nicely behaved is the weak…

It is proved that, for a prime number $p$, showing that an $n$-element matroid is not representable over $GF(p)$ requires only $O(n^2)$ rank evaluations.

Let $G$ be a connected multigraph with $n$ vertices, and suppose $G$ has been edge-colored with $n-1$ colors so that each color class induces a spanning tree. Rota's Basis Conjecture for graphic matroids posits that one can find $n-1$…

We consider the fundamental Matroid Theory problem of finding a circuit in a matroid spanning a set T of given terminal elements. For graphic matroids this corresponds to the problem of finding a simple cycle passing through a set of given…