Related papers: Matroid 3-connectivity and branch width

In this paper, we introduce super-minimally $k$-connected graphs, those $k$-connected graphs in which no proper subgraph is $k$-connected. For $k$ greater than or equal to three, this class lies strictly between the classes of minimally…

We study arrangements of slightly skewed tropical hyperplanes, called blades by A. Ocneanu, on the vertices of a hypersimplex $\Delta_{k,n}$, and we investigate the resulting induced polytopal subdivisions. We show that placing a blade on a…

This paper gives necessary and sufficient conditions on a compact, connected, orientable 3-manifold M for it to contain a knot K such that M-K is irreducible and pi_1(M) embeds in pi_1(M-K). This result provides counterexamples to a…

We show that, for any prime p, a knot K in the 3-sphere is determined by its p-fold cyclic unbranched covering. We also investigate when the m-fold cyclic unbranched covering of a knot coincides with the n-fold cyclic unbranched covering of…

For a knot K, let b_n(K) be the minimum length of an n-stranded braid representative of K. Examples of knots exist for which b_n(K) is a non-increasing function. We investigate the behavior of b_n(K). We develop bounds on the function in…

We call an oriented matroid Mandel if it has an extension in general position which makes all programs with that extension Euclidean. If $L$ is the minimum number of mutations adjacent to an element of the groundset, we call an oriented…

For a matroid $M$ having $m$ rank-one flats, the density $d(M)$ is $\tfrac{m}{r(M)}$ unless $m = 0$, in which case $d(M)= 0$. A matroid is density-critical if all of its proper minors of non-zero rank have lower density. By a 1965 theorem…

Given a matroid together with a coloring of its ground set, a subset of its elements is called rainbow colored if no two of its elements have the same color. We show that if a binary matroid of rank $r$ is colored with exactly $r$ colors,…

Let $M$ be an arbitrary matroid with circuits $\mathcal{C}(M)$. We propose a definition of a derived matroid $\delta M$ that has as its ground set $\mathcal{C}(M)$. Unlike previous attempts of such a definition, our definition applies to…

A tope committee K* for a simple oriented matroid M is a subset of its maximal covectors such that every positive halfspace of M contains more than half of the covectors from K*. The structures of the family of all committees for M, and of…

Neuwirth asked if any non-trivial knot in the 3-sphere can be embedded in a closed surface so that the complement of the surface is a connected essential surface for the knot complement. In this paper, we examine some variations on this…

We prove that for any circle graph $H$ with at least one edge and for any positive integer $k$, there exists an integer $t=t(k,H)$ so that every graph $G$ either has a vertex-minor isomorphic to the disjoint union of $k$ copies of $H$, or…

A parallel minor is obtained from a graph by any sequence of edge contractions and parallel edge deletions. We prove that, for any positive integer k, every internally 4-connected graph of sufficiently high order contains a parallel minor…

A matrix is $k$-nonnegative if all its minors of size $k$ or less are nonnegative. We give a parametrized set of generators and relations for the semigroup of $k$-nonnegative $n\times n$ invertible matrices in two special cases: when $k =…

We consider two types of matroids defined on the edge set of a graph $G$: count matroids ${\cal M}_{k,\ell}(G)$, in which independence is defined by a sparsity count involving the parameters $k$ and $\ell$, and the (three-dimensional…

We provide a combinatorial study of split matroids, a class that was motivated by the study of matroid polytopes from a tropical geometry point of view. A nice feature of split matroids is that they generalize paving matroids, while being…

Given a matroid M on the ground set E, the Bergman fan B(M), or space of M-ultrametrics, is a polyhedral complex in R^E which arises in several different areas, such as tropical algebraic geometry, dynamical systems, and phylogenetics.…

The growth-rate function for a minor-closed class $\mathcal{M}$ of matroids is the function $h$ where, for each non-negative integer $r$, $h(r)$ is the maximum number of elements of a simple matroid in $\mathcal{M}$ with rank at most $r$.…

Robertson and Seymour proved that every graph with sufficiently large treewidth contains a large grid minor. However, the best known bound on the treewidth that forces an $\ell\times\ell$ grid minor is exponential in $\ell$. It is unknown…

Let $G$ and $H$ be simple 3-connected graphs such that $G$ has an $H$-minor. An edge $e$ in $G$ is called {\it $H$-deletable} if $G\backslash e$ is 3-connected and has an $H$-minor. The main result in this paper establishes that, if $G$ has…