Related papers: Counting matroids in minor-closed classes
In 1963, Halin and Jung proved that every simple graph with minimum degree at least four has $K_5$ or $K_{2,2,2}$ as a minor. Mills and Turner proved an analog of this theorem by showing that every $3$-connected binary matroid in which…
We describe an implementation of a computer search for the "small" excluded minors for a class of matroids representable over a partial field. Using these techniques, we enumerate the excluded minors on at most 15 elements for both the…
We discuss a conjecture of Ingleton on excluded minors for base-orderability, and, extending a result he stated, we prove that infinitely many of the matroids that he identified are excluded minors for base-orderability, as well as for the…
In this paper, we propose a new type of matroids, namely covering matroids, and investigate the connections with the second type of covering-based rough sets and some existing special matroids. Firstly, as an extension of partitions,…
Thin sums matroids were introduced to extend the notion of representability to non-finitary matroids. We give a new criterion for testing when the thin sums construction gives a matroid. We show that thin sums matroids over thin families…
We prove that for every proper minor-closed class $M$ of matroids representable over a prime field, there exists a constant-competitive matroid secretary algorithm for the matroids in $M$. This result relies on the extremely powerful…
Let $M$ be a matroid satisfying a matroidal analogue of the Cayley-Bacharach condition. Given a number $k \ge 2$, we show that there is no nontrivial bound on ranks of a $k$-tuple of flats covering the underlying set of $M$. This addresses…
A flat of a matroid is cyclic if it is a union of circuits. The cyclic flats of a matroid form a lattice under inclusion. We study these lattices and explore matroids from the perspective of cyclic flats. In particular, we show that every…
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 $r$.…
In this note we characterize tropical bases as sets of circuits that by orthogonality determine the set of cocircuits of a simple matroid. Furthermore, we show that any circuit, which itself is closed, must be contained in any tropical…
A clutter consists of a finite set and a collection of pairwise incomparable subsets. Clutters are natural generalisations of matroids, and they have similar operations of deletion and contraction. We introduce a notion of connectivity for…
The main result is Theorem MAT 11 which states that every finite closure operator is the ground set of a matroid. Its base sets consist of nonredundant covers of of the closure. These are minimal subsets that determine the closure operator…
We show that the class of bicircular matroids has only a finite number of excluded minors. Key tools used in our proof include representations of matroids by biased graphs and the recently introduced class of quasi-graphic matroids. We show…
Fix a matroid N. A matroid M is N-fragile if, for each element e of M, at least one of M\e and M/e has no N-minor. The Bounded Canopy Conjecture is that all GF(q)-representable matroids M that have an N-minor and are N-fragile have branch…
Let $M$ be a matroid defined on a finite set $E$ and $L\subset E$. $L$ is locked in $M$ if $M|L$ and $M^*|(E\backslash L)$ are 2-connected, and $min\{r(L), r^*(E\backslash L)\} \geq 2$. Locked subsets characterize nontrivial facets of the…
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…
Let $M$ to be a matroid defined on a finite set $E$ and $L\subset E$. $L$ is locked in $M$ if $M|L$ and $M^*|(E\backslash L)$ are 2-connected, and $min\{r(L), r^*(E\backslash L)\} \geq 2$. In this paper, we prove that the nontrivial facets…
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)…
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…
The {\em Dressian} of a matroid $M$ is the set of all valuations of $M$. This Dressian is the support of a polyhedral complex $\mathcal{Dr}(M)$ whose open cells correspond 1-1 with matroid subdivisions of the matroid polytope of $M$. We…