Related papers: Taking minors without splitting tangles

Let $M$ be a representable matroid, and $Q, R, S, T$ subsets of the ground set. We prove that, if $M$ is sufficiently large, then there is an element $e$ such that deleting or contracting $e$ preserves both the $Q$-$R$ and the $S$-$T$…

Let $M$ be a matroid and let $Q$, $R$, $S$ and $T$ be subsets of the ground set such that the smallest separation that separates $Q$ from $R$ has order $k$ and the smallest separation that separates $S$ from $T$ has order $l$. We prove that…

We show that any infinite matroid can be reconstructed from the torsos of a tree-decomposition over its 2-separations, together with local information at the ends of the tree. We show that if the matroid is tame then this local information…

A clutter consists of a finite set and a collection of pairwise incomparable subsets. Clutters are natural generalisations of matroids, and they have similar operations of deletion and contraction. We introduce a notion of connectivity for…

We show that all the tangles in a finite graph or matroid can be distinguished by a single tree-decomposition that is invariant under the automorphisms of the graph or matroid. This comes as a corollary of a similar decomposition theorem…

Motivated by the characterization of the lattice of cyclic flats of a matroid, the convolution of a ranked lattice and a discrete measure is defined, generalizing polymatroid convolution. Using the convolution technique we prove that if a…

An element $e$ of a $3$-connected matroid $M$ is elastic if ${\rm si}(M/e)$, the simplification of $M/e$, and ${\rm co}(M\backslash e)$, the cosimplification of $M\backslash e$, are both $3$-connected. It was recently shown that if…

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…

A tangle of order $k$ in a matroid or graph may be thought of as a "$k$-connected component". For a tangle of order $k$ in a matroid or graph that satisfies a certain robustness condition, we describe a tree decomposition of the matroid or…

Let $EX[M_1\dots, M_k]$ denote the class of binary matroids with no minors isomorphic to $M_1, \dots, M_k$. In this paper we give a decomposition theorem for $EX[S_{10}, S_{10}^*]$, where $S_{10}$ is a certain 10-element rank-4 matroid. As…

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.

We give a short proof that every finite graph (or matroid) has a tree-decomposition that displays all maximal tangles. This theorem for graphs is a central result of the graph minors project of Robertson and Seymour and the extension to…

Using a new technique, we prove a rich family of special cases of the matroid intersection conjecture. Roughly, we prove the conjecture for pairs of tame matroids which have a common decomposition by 2-separations into finite parts.

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 $1$.…

We show that, for any graph or matroid, there is a tree that simultaneously distinguishes its maximal tangles, and, for each maximal tangle $\mathcal{T}$ that satisfies an additional robustness condition, displays all of the non-trivial…

It is well known that the class of transversal matroids is not closed under contraction or duality. In particular, after contracting a set of elements from a transversal matroid, the resulting matroid may or may not be transversal, and the…

For a matroid $M$, an element $e$ such that both $M\backslash e$ and $M/e$ are regular is called a regular element of $M$. We determine completely the structure of non-regular matroids with at least two regular elements. Besides four small…

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…

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…

For all positive integers $\ell$ and $r$, we determine the maximum number of elements of a simple rank-$r$ positroid without the rank-$2$ uniform matroid $U_{2,\ell+2}$ as a minor, and characterize the matroids with the maximum number of…