Related papers: Improved bounds for Rota's Basis Conjecture
The Alon-Tarsi Latin square conjecture is extended to odd dimensions by stating it for reduced Latin squares (Latin squares having the identity permutation as their first row and first column). A modified version of Onn's colorful…
This paper studies the properties of two kinds of matroids: (a) algebraic matroids and (b) finite and infinite matroids whose ground set have some canonical symmetry, for example row and column symmetry and transposition symmetry. For (a)…
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…
We characterize 2-dimensional complexes associated canonically with basis graphs of matroids as simply connected triangle-square complexes satisfying some local conditions. This proves a version of a (disproved) conjecture by Stephen Maurer…
One of the most intriguing unsolved questions of matroid optimization is the characterization of the existence of $k$ disjoint common bases of two matroids. The significance of the problem is well-illustrated by the long list of conjectures…
We consider the class of graphs for which the edge connectivity is equal to the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees, and the natural generalization to matroids, where the cogirth is equal to the number of disjoint bases. We…
We relate two conjectures that play a central role in the reported proof of Rota's Conjecture. Let $\mathbb F$ be a finite field. The first conjecture states that: the branch-width of any $\mathbb F$-representable $N$-fragile matroid is…
The family of 2-level matroids, that is, matroids whose base polytope is 2-level, has been recently studied and characterized by means of combinatorial properties. 2-level matroids generalize series-parallel graphs, which have been already…
One characterization of binary matroids is that the symmetric difference of every pair of intersecting circuits is a disjoint union of circuits. This paper considers circuit-difference matroids, that is, those matroids in which the…
The first author introduced the circuit-cocircuit reversal system of an oriented matroid, and showed that when the underlying matroid is regular, the cardinalities of such system and its variations are equal to special evaluations of the…
We prove that the Tutte polynomial of a coloopless paving matroid is convex along the portions of the line segments x+y=p lying in the positive quadrant. Every coloopless paving matroids is in the class of matroids which contain two…
In 1991, Kahn made the following conjecture. For any $n$-dimensional vector space $V$ and any $n\times n$ array of $n^2$ bases of $V$, it is possible to choose a representative vector from each of these bases in such a way that the…
Let $\mathcal{M}$ and $\mathcal{N}$ be two matroids on the same ground set $V$. Let $A_1,\dots,A_{2n-1}$ be sets which are independent in both $\mathcal{M}$ and $\mathcal{N}$, satisfying $|A_i|\geq \textrm{min}(i,n)$ for all $i$. We show…
As an extension of a classical tree-partition problem, we consider decompositions of graphs into edge-disjoint (rooted-)trees with an additional matroid constraint. Specifically, suppose we are given a graph $G=(V,E)$, a multiset…
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 show that the number of linear spaces on a set of $n$ points and the number of rank-3 matroids on a ground set of size $n$ are both of the form $(cn+o(n))^{n^2/6}$, where $c=e^{\sqrt 3/2-3}(1+\sqrt 3)/2$. This is the final piece of the…
We prove the existence of a positive semidefinite matrix $A \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n}$ such that any decomposition into rank-1 matrices has to have factors with a large $\ell^1-$norm, more precisely $$ \sum_{k} x_k x_k^*=A \quad \implies…
We show that every heptagon is a section of a $3$-polytope with $6$ vertices. This implies that every $n$-gon with $n\geq 7$ can be obtained as a section of a $(2+\lfloor\frac{n}{7}\rfloor)$-dimensional polytope with at most…
In a recent paper, Bruhn, Diestel, Kriesell and Wollan (arXiv:1003.3919) present four systems of axioms for infinite matroids, in terms of independent sets, bases, closure and circuits. No system of rank axioms is given. We give an easy…
The extension space conjecture of oriented matroid theory states that the space of all one-element, non-loop, non-coloop extensions of a realizable oriented matroid of rank $d$ has the homotopy type of a sphere of dimension $d-1$. We…