Related papers: Antimatroids and Balanced Pairs

We present an algebraic framework which simultaneously generalizes the notion of linear subspaces, matroids, valuated matroids, and oriented matroids. We call the resulting objects matroids over hyperfields. In fact, there are (at least)…

A notion of branch-width, which generalizes the one known for graphs, can be defined for matroids. We first give a proof of the polynomial time model-checking of monadic second-order formulas on representable matroids of bounded…

Recently, Gross, Mansour and Tucker introduced the partial duality polynomial of a ribbon graph and posed a conjecture that there is no orientable ribbon graph whose partial duality polynomial has only one non-constant term. We found an…

Let $M$ be a matroid. We study the expansions of $M$ mainly to see how the combinatorial properties of $M$ and its expansions are related to each other. It is shown that $M$ is a graphic, binary or a transversal matroid if and only if an…

Wei's celebrated Duality Theorem is generalized in several ways, expressed as duality theorems for linear codes over division rings and, more generally, duality theorems for matroids. These results are further generalized, resulting in two…

In this sequel to "Foundations of matroids - Part 1", we establish several presentations of the foundation of a matroid in terms of small building blocks. For example, we show that the foundation of a matroid M is the colimit of the…

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…

An intertwine of a pair of matroids is a matroid such that it, but none of its proper minors, has minors that are isomorphic to each matroid in the pair. For pairs for which neither matroid can be obtained, up to isomorphism, from the other…

The investigation of width parameters in both graph and algebraic contexts has attracted considerable interest. Among these parameters, the linear branch width has emerged as a crucial measure. In this concise paper, we explore the concept…

Matroids and semigraphoids are discrete structures abstracting and generalizing linear independence among vectors and conditional independence among random variables, respectively. Despite the different nature of conditional independence…

Let $M$ be a matroid without loops or coloops and let $T(M;x,y)$ be its Tutte polynomial. In 1999 Merino and Welsh conjectured that $$\max(T(M;2,0), T(M;0,2))\geq T(M;1,1)$$ holds for graphic matroids. Ten years later, Conde and Merino…

In [2], while studying a relevant class of polyominoes that tile the plane by translation, i.e., double square polyominoes, the authors found that their boundary words, encoded by the Freeman chain coding on a four letters alphabet, have…

In the ordinal Matroid Secretary Problem (MSP), elements from a weighted matroid are presented in random order to an algorithm that must incrementally select a large weight independent set. However, the algorithm can only compare pairs of…

Rota's Basis Conjecture is a well known problem from matroid theory, that states that for any collection of $n$ bases in a rank $n$ matroid, it is possible to decompose all the elements into $n$ disjoint rainbow bases. Here an asymptotic…

We prove that a monomial ideal $I$ generated in a single degree, is polymatroidal if and only if it has linear quotients with respect to the lexicographical ordering of the minimal generators induced by every ordering of variables. We also…

Gordon introduced a class of matroids $M(n)$, for prime $n\ge 2$, such that $M(n)$ is algebraically representable, but only in characteristic $n$. Lindstr\"om proved that $M(n)$ for general $n\ge 2$ is not algebraically representable if…

Seymour's Splitter Theorem is a basic inductive tool for dealing with $3$-connected matroids. This paper proves a generalization of that theorem for the class of $2$-polymatroids. Such structures include matroids, and they model both sets…

Let $M$ be a 3-connected matroid, and let $N$ be a 3-connected minor of $M$. We say that a pair $\{x_1,x_2\} \subseteq E(M)$ is $N$-detachable if one of the matroids $M/x_1/x_2$ or $M \backslash x_1 \backslash x_2$ is both 3-connected and…

In 1981, Stanley applied the Aleksandrov-Fenchel inequalities to prove a logarithmic concavity theorem for regular matroids. Using ideas from electrical network theory we prove a generalization of this for the wider class of matroids with…

Pairwise comparison matrices often exhibit inconsistency, therefore many indices have been suggested to measure their deviation from a consistent matrix. A set of axioms has been proposed recently that is required to be satisfied by any…