Related papers: On Seymour's Decomposition Theorem

The classes of even-cycle matroids, even-cycle matroids with a blocking pair, and even-cut matroids each have hundreds of excluded minors. We show that the number of excluded minors for these classes can be drastically reduced if we…

A minor-closed class of matroids is (strongly) fractal if the number of n-element matroids in the class is dominated by the number of n-element excluded minors. We conjecture that when K is an infinite field, the class of K-representable…

For any minor-closed class of matroids over a fixed finite field, we state an exact structural characterization for the sufficiently connected matroids in the class. We also state a number of conjectures that might be approachable using the…

In this survey-research paper, we first introduce the theory of Smith classes of complexes with fixed-point free, periodic maps on them. These classes, when defined for the deleted product of a simplicial complex $K$, are the same as the…

Let $M$ be a $3$-connected matroid. A pair $\{e,f\}$ in $M$ is detachable if $M \backslash e \backslash f$ or $M / e / f$ is $3$-connected. Williams (2015) proved that if $M$ has at least 13 elements, then at least one of the following…

An element $e$ of a $3$-connected matroid $M$ is elastic if ${\rm si}(M/e)$, the simplification of $M/e$, and ${\rm co}(M\backslash e)$, the cosimplification of $M\backslash e$, are both $3$-connected. It was recently shown that if…

We give a characterization of the internally 4-connected binary matroids that have no minor isomorphic to M(K3,3). Any such matroid is either cographic, or is isomorphic to a particular single-element extension of the bond matroid of a…

Antimatroids were discovered by Dilworth in the context of lattices [4] and introduced by Edelman and Jamison as convex geometries in[5]. The author of the current paper independently discovered (possibly infinite) antimatroids in the…

B\'ar\'any, Kalai, and Meshulam recently obtained a topological Tverberg-type theorem for matroids, which guarantees multiple coincidences for continuous maps from a matroid complex to d-dimensional Euclidean space, if the matroid has…

Matroid theory provides a unifying framework for studying dependence across combinatorics, geometry, and applications ranging from rigidity to statistics. In this work, we study circuit varieties of matroids, defined by their minimal…

We consider some applications of our characterisation of the internally 4-connected binary matroids with no M(K3,3)-minor. We characterise the internally 4-connected binary matroids with no minor in some subset of…

We prove that for each prime power $q$ there is an integer $n$ such that if $M$ is a $3$-connected, representable matroid with a PG$(n-1,q)$-minor and no $U_{2,q^2+1}$-minor, then $M$ is representable over GF$(q)$. We also show that for…

If S is a set of matroids, then the matroid M is S-fragile if, for every element e in E(M), either M\e or M/e has no minor isomorphic to a member of S. Excluded-minor characterizations often depend, implicitly or explicitly, on…

We prove that for each finite field $\mathbb F$ and integer $k\in \mathbb Z$ there exists $n\in \mathbb Z$ such that no excluded minor for the class of $\mathbb F$-representable matroids has $n$ nested $k$-separations.

We establish the following splitter theorem for graphs and its generalization for matroids: Let $G$ and $H$ be $3$-connected simple graphs such that $G$ has an $H$-minor and $k:=|V(G)|-|V(H)|\ge 2$. Let $n:=\left\lceil k/2\right\rceil+1$.…

Given a simple Eulerian binary matroid $M$, what is the minimum number of disjoint circuits necessary to decompose $M$? We prove that $|M| / (\operatorname{rank}(M) + 1)$ many circuits suffice if $M = \mathbb F_2^n \setminus \{0\}$ is the…

If V(R) is the vertex set of a symmetric cycle R in the tope graph of a simple oriented matroid M, then for any tope T of M there exists a unique inclusion-minimal subset Q(T;R) of V(R) such that T is the sum of the topes of Q(T;R). If…

We give an excluded-minor characterization for the class of matroids M in which M\e or M/e is binary for all e in E(M). This class is closely related to the class of matroids in which every member is binary or can be obtained from a binary…

A simple binary matroid is called claw-free if none of its rank-3 flats are independent sets. These objects can be equivalently defined as the sets $E$ of points in $\mathrm{PG}(n-1,2)$ for which $|E \cap P|$ is not a basis of $P$ for any…

Let $\cM$ be a minor-closed class of matroids that does not contain arbitrarily long lines. The growth rate function, $h:\bN\rightarrow \bN$ of $\cM$ is given by $$h(n) = \max(|M|\, : \, M\in \cM, simple, rank-$n$).$$ The Growth Rate…