Related papers: Excluded minors are almost fragile II: essential e…

We use counting arguments to show that asymptotically almost all sparse paving matroids contain an $H$-minor, where $H$ falls into one of several simple classes of matroids. Furthermore the result holds for all $H$ in a larger class of…

Two nonzero recursively enumerable (r.e.) degrees $\mathbf{a}$ and $\mathbf{b}$ form a strong minimal pair if $\mathbf{a} \wedge \mathbf{b}=\mathbf{0}$ and $\mathbf{b}\vee \mathbf{x}\geq \mathbf{a}$ for any nonzero r.e. degree…

The prism graph is the dual of the complete graph on five vertices with an edge deleted, $K_5\backslash e$. In this paper we determine the class of binary matroids with no prism minor. The motivation for this problem is the 1963 result by…

Let $M$ be a 3-connected binary matroid and let $Y(M)$ be the set of elements of $M$ avoiding at least $r(M)+1$ non-separating cocircuits of $M$. Lemos proved that $M$ is non-graphic if and only if $Y(M)\neq\emp$. We generalize this result…

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…

Let M be a matroid representable over a (partial) field P and B a matrix representable over a sub-partial field P' of P. We say that B confines M to P' if, whenever a P-representation matrix A of M has a submatrix B, A is a scaled…

This paper studies systems of polynomial equations that provide information about orientability of matroids. First, we study systems of linear equations over GF(2), originally alluded to by Bland and Jensen in their seminal paper on weak…

We describe the local structure of an irreducible algebraic monoid $M$ at an idempotent element $e$. When $e$ is minimal, we show that $M$ is an induced variety over the kernel $MeM$ (a homogeneous space) with fibre the two-sided stabilizer…

Given a matroid together with a coloring of its ground set, a subset of its elements is called rainbow colored if no two of its elements have the same color. We show that if a binary matroid of rank $r$ is colored with exactly $r$ colors,…

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 $R$ be a commutative ring with a non-zero identity, $S$ be a multiplicatively closed subset of $R$ and $M$ be a unital $R$-module. In this paper, we define a submodule $N$ of $M$ with $(N:_{R}M)\cap S=\emptyset$ to be weakly $S$-primary…

A matroid is uniform if and only if it has no minor isomorphic to $U_{1,1}\oplus U_{0,1}$ and is paving if and only if it has no minor isomorphic to $U_{2,2}\oplus U_{0,1}$. This paper considers, more generally, when a matroid $M$ has no…

Consider a matrix $M$ chosen uniformly at random from a class of $m \times n$ matrices of zeros and ones with prescribed row and column sums. A partially filled matrix $D$ is a $\mathit{defining}$ $\mathit{set}$ for $M$ if $M$ is the unique…

Let $M$ be a cancellative and commutative monoid. A non-invertible element of $M$ is called an atom (or irreducible element) if it cannot be factored into two non-invertible elements, while an atom $a$ of $M$ is called strong if $a^n$ has a…

A simple binary matroid is called $I_4$-free if none of its rank-4 flats are independent sets. These objects can be equivalently defined as the sets $E$ of points in $PG(n-1,2)$ for which $|E \cap F|$ is not a basis of $F$ for any…

If $M$ is a matroid, then a simple matroid $M'$ with the same rank as $M$ is an adjoint of $M$ if there is an inclusion-reversing embedding $\phi$ of the lattice of flats of $M$ into the lattice of flats of $M'$ such that $\phi$ maps the…

We present some variants of the Kaplansky condition for a K-Hermite ring $R$ to be an elementary divisor ring; for example, a commutative K-Hermite ring $R$ is an EDR iff for any elements $x,y,z\in R$ such that $(x,y)=(1)$, there exists an…

We determine the smallest simple triangle-free binary matroids that have no five-element independent flat. This solves a special case of a conjecture of Nelson and Norin.

In this paper, we investigate three problems concerning the toric ideal associated to a matroid. Firstly, we list all matroids $\mathcal M$ such that its corresponding toric ideal $I_{\mathcal M}$ is a complete intersection. Secondly, we…

Every minor-closed class of matroids of bounded branch-width can be characterized by a list of excluded minors, but unlike graphs, this list may need to be infinite in general. However, for each fixed finite field $\mathbb F$, the list…