Related papers: Representing Matroids over the Reals is $\exists \…
A fundamental theorem of matroid theory establishes that a transversal matroid is representable over fields of any characteristic. It was proved in 1970 by Piff and Welsh: their proof is elegant and concise and, moveover, constructive.…
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)…
Discrete polymatroids are the multi-set analogue of matroids. In this paper, we explore the connections among linear network coding, linear index coding and representable discrete polymatroids. We consider vector linear solutions of…
Inspired by Kontsevich's graphic orbifold Euler characteristic we define a virtual Euler characteristic for any finite set of isomorphism classes of matroids of rank $r$. Our main result provides a simple formula for the virtual Euler…
Let b(M) denote the maximal number of disjoint bases in a matroid M. It is shown that if M is a matroid of rank d+1, then for any continuous map f from the matroidal complex M into the d-dimensional Euclidean space there exist t \geq…
We show that if the ground set of a matroid can be partitioned into $k\ge 2$ bases, then for any given subset $S$ of the ground set, there is a partition into $k$ bases such that the sizes of the intersections of the bases with $S$ may…
Let $M$ to 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 $min\{r(L), r^*(E\backslash L)\} \geq 2$. In this paper, we prove that the nontrivial facets…
A matroid of rank $r$ on $n$ elements is a positroid if it has a representation by an $r$ by $n$ matrix over $\mathbb{R}$, each $r$ by $r$ submatrix of which has nonnegative determinant. Earlier characterizations of connected positroids and…
For each positive integer $t$ and each sufficiently large integer $r$, we show that the maximum number of elements of a simple, rank-$r$, $\mathbb C$-representable matroid with no $U_{2,t+3}$-minor is $t{r\choose 2}+r$. We derive this as a…
This is a continuation of the early paper concerning matroid base polytope decomposition. Here, we will present sufficient conditions on $M$ so its base matroid polytope $P(M)$ has a {\em sequence} of hyperplane splits. The latter yields to…
A frame template over a field $\mathbb F$ describes the precise way in which a given $\mathbb F$-representable matroid is close to being a frame matroid. Our main result determines the maximum-rank projective or affine geometry that is…
Melchior's inequality implies that the average line-length in a simple, rank-$3$, real-representable matroid is less than $3$. A similar result holds for complex-representable matroids, using Hirzebruch's inequality, but with a weaker bound…
In this paper we consider the classic matroid intersection problem: given two matroids $\M_{1}=(V,\I_{1})$ and $\M_{2}=(V,\I_{2})$ defined over a common ground set $V$, compute a set $S\in\I_{1}\cap\I_{2}$ of largest possible cardinality,…
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…
There has recently been ample interest in the question of which sets can be represented by linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). A necessary condition is that the set is rigidly convex, and it has been conjectured that rigid convexity is also…
Let $M$ be a matroid on a finite ground set $E$, and suppose that the automorphism group of $M$ acts transitively on $E$. We show the following: if $X_1,\ldots,X_K$ are sampled independently from a distribution $p$ on $E$, then 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…
We show that a simple rank-$r$ matroid with no $(t+1)$-element independent flat has at least as many elements as the matroid $M_{r,t}$ defined as the direct sum of $t$ binary projective geometries whose ranks pairwise differ by at most $1$.…
Given two matroids $\mathcal{M}_{1} = (E, \mathcal{B}_{1})$ and $\mathcal{M}_{2} = (E, \mathcal{B}_{2})$ on a common ground set $E$ with base sets $\mathcal{B}_{1}$ and $\mathcal{B}_{2}$, some integer $k \in \mathbb{N}$, and two cost…
For a simplicial complex ${\mathcal C}$ denote by $\beta({\mathcal C})$ the minimal number of edges from ${\mathcal C}$ needed to cover the ground set. If ${\mathcal C}$ is a matroid then for every partition $A_1, \ldots, A_m$ of the ground…