Related papers: Average plane-size in complex-representable matroi…

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 Sylvester-Gallai Theorem states that every rank-$3$ real-representable matroid has a two-point line. We prove that, for each $k\ge 2$, every complex-representable matroid with rank at least $4^{k-1}$ has a rank-$k$ flat with exactly $k$…

We show that, for any prime $p$ and integer $k \geq 2$, a simple GF($p$)-representable matroid with sufficiently high rank has a rank-$k$ flat which is either independent in $M$, or is a projective or affine geometry. As a corollary we…

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 that if M is a vertically 4-connected matroid with a modular flat X of rank at least three, then every representation of M | X over a finite field F extends to a unique F-representation of M. A corollary is that when F has order q,…

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…

In this paper we highlight some enumerative results concerning matroids of low rank and prove the tail-ends of various sequences involving the number of matroids on a finite set to be log-convex. We give a recursion for a new, slightly…

We show that, if $k$ and $\ell$ are positive integers and $r$ is sufficiently large, then the number of rank-$k$ flats in a rank-$r$ matroid $M$ with no $U_{2,\ell+2}$-minor is less than or equal to number of rank-$k$ flats in a rank-$r$…

For each proper minor-closed subclass $\cM$ of the $\GF(q^2)$-representable matroids containing all simple $\GF(q)$-representable matroids, we give, for all large $r$, a tight upper bound on the number of points in a rank-$r$ matroid in…

We prove that the maximum size of a simple binary matroid of rank $r \geq 5$ with no AG(3,2)-minor is $\binom{r+1}{2}$ and characterise those matroids achieving this bound. When $r \geq 6$, the graphic matroid $M(K_{r+1})$ is the unique…

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…

It has been conjectured that asymptotically almost all matroids are sparse paving, i.e. that $s(n) \sim m(n)$, where $m(n)$ denotes the number of matroids on a fixed groundset of size $n$, and $s(n)$ the number of sparse paving matroids. In…

We show for each positive integer $a$ that, if $\mathcal{M}$ is a minor-closed class of matroids not containing all rank-$(a+1)$ uniform matroids, then there exists an integer $c$ such that either every rank-$r$ matroid in $\mathcal{M}$ can…

This paper introduces combinatorial representations, which generalise the notion of linear representations of matroids. We show that any family of subsets of the same cardinality has a combinatorial representation via matrices. We then…

Let $M$ be a matroid satisfying a matroidal analogue of the Cayley-Bacharach condition. Given a number $k \ge 2$, we show that there is no nontrivial bound on ranks of a $k$-tuple of flats covering the underlying set of $M$. This addresses…

A matroid $M$ is an ordered pair $(E,I)$, where $E$ is a finite set called the ground set and a collection $I\subset 2^{E}$ called the independent sets which satisfy the conditions: (i) $\emptyset \in I$, (ii) $I'\subset I \in I$ implies…

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…

We define a generic rigidity matroid for $k$-volumes of a simplicial complex in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and prove that for $2\leq k \leq d-1$ it has the same rank as the classical generic $d$-rigidity matroid on the same vertex set (namely, the…

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 $1$.…

Multilinear representability extends classical linear representability of matroids by assigning subspaces, rather than vectors, to ground elements. This notion is closely related to almost affine codes. In this paper, we introduce and study…