Related papers: The smallest matroids with no large independent fl…

We construct a new family of minimal non-orientable matroids of rank three. Some of these matroids embed in Desarguesian projective planes. This answers a question of Ziegler: for every prime power $q$, find a minimal non-orientable…

If V(R) is the vertex sequence of a symmetric cycle R in the tope graph of a simple acyclic oriented matroid M on a t-element ground set, then the set min V(R) of minimal elements in the subposet V(R) of the tope poset of M, based at the…

An algebra $\A$ is said to be an independence algebra if it is a matroid algebra and every map $\al:X\to A$, defined on a basis $X$ of $\A$, can be extended to an endomorphism of $\A$. These algebras are particularly well behaved…

A theory of single-element extensions of integer polymatroids analogous to that of matroids is developed. We present an algorithm to generate a catalog of $2$-polymatroids, up to isomorphism. When we implemented this algorithm on a…

We study smoothness of realization spaces of matroids for small rank and ground set. For $\mathbb{C}$-realizable matroids, when the rank is $3$, we prove that the realization spaces are all smooth when the ground set has $11$ or fewer…

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…

Generalizing a theorem of the first two authors and Geelen for planes, we show that, for a real-representable matroid $M$, either the average hyperplane-size in $M$ is at most a constant depending only on its rank, or each hyperplane of $M$…

The third author introduced the $g$-polynomial $g_M(t)$ of a matroid, a covaluative matroid statistic which is unchanged under series and parallel extension. The $g$-polynomial of a rank $r$ matroid $M$ has the form $g_1 t + g_2 t^2 +…

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 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…

For all positive integers $s$ and $t$ exceeding one, a matroid $M$ on $n$ elements is {\em nearly $(s, t)$-cyclic} if there is a cyclic ordering $\sigma$ of its ground set such that every $s-1$ consecutive elements of $\sigma$ are contained…

A spectrahedron is a set defined by a linear matrix inequality. Given a spectrahedron we are interested in the question of the smallest possible size $r$ of the matrices in the description by linear matrix inequalities. We show that for the…

This paper initiates the explicit study of face numbers of matroid polytopes and their computation. We prove that, for the large class of split matroid polytopes, their face numbers depend solely on the number of cyclic flats of each rank…

A binary frame template is a device for creating binary matroids from graphic or cographic matroids. Such matroids are said to conform or coconform to the template. We introduce a preorder on these templates and determine the nontrivial…

For all positive integers $t$ exceeding one, a matroid has the cyclic $(t-1,t)$-property if its ground set has a cyclic ordering $\sigma$ such that every set of $t-1$ consecutive elements in $\sigma$ is contained in a $t$-element circuit…

The structure of the category of matroids and strong maps is investigated: it has coproducts and equalizers, but not products or coequalizers; there are functors from the categories of graphs and vector spaces, the latter being faithful;…

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…

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…

DeVos et al conjectured that if $M$ is a simple, regular matroid and $c$ is a colouring of the elements of $M$ with $r(M)+1$ colours, where each colour class has at least two elements, then $M$ contains a rainbow circuit of size at most…

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…