Related papers: The minors of matroids with an adjoint
We show that an adjoint of a loopless matroid is connected if and only if it itself is connected. Our first goal is to study the adjoint of modular matroids. We prove that a modular matroid has only one adjoint (up to isomorphism) which can…
The problem of finding the minimum rank of a matrix with a given zero-nonzero pattern has been generalized to a class of matroids associated to the pattern. The fundamental lower bound known as the triangle number still holds in this…
We call a class $\mathcal{M}$ of matroids hereditary if it is closed under flats. We denote by $\mathcal{M}^{ext}$ the class of matroids $M$ that is in $\mathcal{M}$, or has an element $e$ such that $M \backslash e$ is in $\mathcal{M}$. We…
Split matroids form a minor-closed class of matroids, and are defined by placing conditions on the system of split hyperplanes in the matroid base polytope. They can equivalently be defined in terms of structural properties involving cyclic…
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…
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…
For any minor-closed class of matroids over a fixed finite field, we state an exact structural characterization for the sufficiently connected matroids in the class. We also state a number of conjectures that might be approachable using the…
A flat of a matroid is cyclic if it is a union of circuits. The cyclic flats of a matroid form a lattice under inclusion. We study these lattices and explore matroids from the perspective of cyclic flats. In particular, we show that every…
A flat cover is a collection of flats identifying the non-bases of a matroid. We introduce the notion of cover complexity, the minimal size of such a flat cover, as a measure for the complexity of a matroid, and present bounds on the number…
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…
This paper studies structural aspects of lattice path matroids, a class of transversal matroids that is closed under taking minors and duals. Among the basic topics treated are direct sums, duals, minors, circuits, and connected flats. One…
We construct a family of independent sets for finite, atomic, and graded lattices, extending the well-known cryptomorphism between geometric lattices and matroids. This construction leads to an embedding theorem into geometric lattices that…
We study the closure operators of polymatroids from a lattice theoretic point of view. We show that polymatroid closure operators relate to lattices enriched with a generating set in the same way that matroids relate to geometric lattices.…
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,…
We provide a combinatorial study of split matroids, a class that was motivated by the study of matroid polytopes from a tropical geometry point of view. A nice feature of split matroids is that they generalize paving matroids, while being…
A matroid $N$ is said to be triangle-rounded in a class of matroids $\mathcal{M}$ if each $3$-connected matroid $M\in \mathcal{M}$ with a triangle $T$ and an $N$-minor has an $N$-minor with $T$ as triangle. Reid gave a result useful to…
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 $1$.…
Nested matroids were introduced by Crapo in 1965 and have appeared frequently in the literature since then. A flat of a matroid $M$ is Hamiltonian if it has a spanning circuit. A matroid $M$ is nested if and only if its Hamiltonian flats…
In this note we investigate some matroid minor structure results. In particular, we present sufficient conditions, in terms of {\em triangles}, for a matroid to have either $U_{2,4}$ or $F_7$ or $M(K_5)$ as a minor.
In earlier work, we characterized the class of matroids with no $M(C_4)$ as an induced minor and the class of matroids with no member of $\{M(C_4),M(K_4)\}$ as an induced minor. In this paper, for every two matroids in…