Related papers: $k$-loose elements and $k$-paving matroids
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…
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…
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…
The Tic-Tac-Toe matroid is a paving matroid of rank $5$ on 9 elements which is pseudomodular and whose dual is non-algebraic. It has been proposed as a possible example of an algebraic matroid whose dual is not algebraic. We present an…
An intertwine of a pair of matroids is a matroid such that it, but none of its proper minors, has minors that are isomorphic to each matroid in the pair. For pairs for which neither matroid can be obtained, up to isomorphism, from the other…
We provide a number of algorithmic results for the following family of problems: For a given binary m\times n matrix A and integer k, decide whether there is a "simple" binary matrix B which differs from A in at most k entries. For an…
A simple binary matroid is called claw-free if none of its rank-3 flats are independent sets. These objects can be equivalently defined as the sets $E$ of points in $\mathrm{PG}(n-1,2)$ for which $|E \cap P|$ is not a basis of $P$ for any…
Let $\cX$ be a family of subsets of a finite set $E$. A matroid on $E$ is called an $\cX$-matroid if each set in $\cX$ is a circuit. We consider the problem of determining when there exists a unique maximal $\cX$-matroid in the weak order…
A coloring of a matroid is an assignment of colors to the elements of its ground set. We restrict to proper colorings - those for which elements of the same color form an independent set. Seymour proved that a $k$-colorable matroid is also…
A $q$-matroid is the analogue of a matroid which arises by replacing the finite ground set of a matroid with a finite-dimensional vector space over a finite field. These $q$-matroids are motivated by coding theory as the representable…
We define a $q$-linear path in a hypergraph $H$ as a sequence $(e_1,\ldots,e_L)$ of edges of $H$ such that $|e_i \cap e_{i+1}| \in [\![1,q]\!]$ and $e_i \cap e_j=\varnothing$ if $|i-j|>1$. In this paper, we study the connected components…
It is proved that for each prime field $GF(p)$, there is an integer $f(p)$ such that a 4-connected matroid has at most $f(p)$ inequivalent representations over $GF(p)$. We also prove a stronger theorem that obtains the same conclusion for…
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…
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…
A graph $G=(V,E)$ is called $(k,\ell)$-sparse if $|F|\leq k|V(F)|-\ell$ for any nonempty $F\subseteq E$, where $V(F)$ denotes the set of vertices incident to $F$. It is known that the family of the edge sets of $(k,\ell)$-sparse subgraphs…
We show for each positive integer $a$ that, if $\cM$ is a minor-closed class of matroids not containing all rank-$(a+1)$ uniform matroids, then there exists an integer $n$ such that either every rank-$r$ matroid in $\cM$ can be covered by…
A matroid is $\text{GF}(q)$-regular if it is representable over all proper superfields of the field $\text{GF}(q)$. We show that, for highly connected matroids having a large projective geometry over $\text{GF}(q)$ as a minor, the property…
We classify all matroids with at most 8 elements that have the half-plane property, and we provide a list of some matroids on 9 elements that have, and that do not have the half-plane property. Furthermore, we prove that several classes of…
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…
We show that, if $\alpha > 0$ is a real number, $n \ge 2$ and $\ell \ge 2$ are integers, and $q$ is a prime power, then every simple matroid $M$ of sufficiently large rank, with no $U_{2,\ell}$-minor, no rank-$n$ projective geometry minor…