Related papers: Clonal cores and flexipaths in matroids

The {\em breadth} of a tangle $\mathcal{T}$ in a matroid is the size of the largest spanning uniform submatroid of the tangle matroid of $\mathcal{T}$. A matroid $M$ is {\em weakly $4$-connected} if it is 3-connected and whenever $(X,Y)$ is…

The problem of covering the ground set of two matroids by a minimum number of common independent sets is notoriously hard even in very restricted settings, i.e.\ when the goal is to decide if two common independent sets suffice or not.…

In this paper we establish a variation of the Splitter Theorem. Let $M$ and $N$ be simple 3-connected matroids. We say that $x\in E(M)$ is vertically $N$-contractible if $si(M/x)$ is a 3-connected matroid with an $N$-minor. Whittle (for…

Seymour's Splitter Theorem is a basic inductive tool for dealing with $3$-connected matroids. This paper proves a generalization of that theorem for the class of $2$-polymatroids. Such structures include matroids, and they model both sets…

The weak-map order on the matroid base polytopes is the partial order defined by inclusion. Lucas proved that the base polytope of no binary matroid includes the base polytope of a connected matroid. A matroid base polytope is said to be…

In this paper, we investigate the relation between a $q$-matroid and its associated matroid called the projectivization matroid. The latter arises by projectivizing the groundspace of the $q$-matroid and considering the projective space as…

There is a long list of open questions rooted in the same underlying problem: understanding the structure of bases or common bases of matroids. These conjectures suggest that matroids may possess much stronger structural properties than are…

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…

Komj\'ath, Milner, and Polat investigated when a finitary matroid admits a partition into circuits. They defined the class of ``finite matching extendable'' matroids and showed in their compactness theorem that those matroids always admit…

Let ${\mathcal{M} = (M_i \colon i\in K)}$ be a finite or infinite family consisting of matroids on a common ground set $E$ each of which may be finitary or cofinitary. We prove the following Cantor-Bernstein-type result: If there is a…

This dissertation presents new results on three different themes all related to matroid polytopes. First we investigate properties of Ehrhart polynomials of matroid polytopes, independence matroid polytopes, and polymatroids. We prove that…

A matroid is a machine capturing linearity of mathematical objects and producing combinatorial structures. Matroid structure arises everywhere since linearity is a ubiquitous concept. One natural way to obtain matroids is by considering…

We study rational homology groups of one-point compactifications of spaces of complex monic polynomials with multiple roots. These spaces are indexed by number partitions. A standard reformulation in terms of quotients of orbit arrangements…

Assume that the vertices of a graph $G$ are always operational, but the edges of $G$ fail independently with probability $q \in[0,1]$. The \emph{all-terminal reliability} of $G$ is the probability that the resulting subgraph is connected.…

For a matroid $N$, a matroid $M$ is $N$-connected if every two elements of $M$ are in an $N$-minor together. Thus a matroid is connected if and only if it is $U_{1,2}$-connected. This paper proves that $U_{1,2}$ is the only connected…

For two matroids $M_1$ and $M_2$ with the same ground set $V$ and two cost functions $w_1$ and $w_2$ on $2^V$, we consider the problem of finding bases $X_1$ of $M_1$ and $X_2$ of $M_2$ minimizing $w_1(X_1)+w_2(X_2)$ subject to a certain…

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…

In 1961, Dirac showed that chordal graphs are exactly the graphs that can be constructed from complete graphs by a sequence of clique-sums. In an earlier paper, by analogy with Dirac's result, we introduced the class of $GF(q)$-chordal…

Matroid theory provides a unifying framework for studying dependence across combinatorics, geometry, and applications ranging from rigidity to statistics. In this work, we study circuit varieties of matroids, defined by their minimal…

We compute the $cd$-index $\Psi_{cd}$ of matroid base polytopes $\mathscr{P}(M)$ for a large family of matroids $M$. The $cd$-index is a polynomial in two non-commutative variables that compactly encodes the count of face flags $\mathcal{F}…