Related papers: Taking minors without splitting tangles

We generalize the well-studied notion of a modular pair of a finite matroid to arbitrary families of sets in infinite matroids, and use it to develop the theory of infinite matroids in several as-yet-unexplored areas. Our results include a…

Let $M$ be a $3$-connected binary matroid; $M$ is called internally $4$-connected if one side of every $3$-separation is a triangle or a triad, and $M$ is $(4,4,S)$-connected if one side of every $3$-separation is a triangle, a triad, or a…

The notion of branch-depth for matroids was introduced by DeVos, Kwon and Oum as the matroid analogue of the tree-depth of graphs. The contraction-deletion-depth, another tree-depth like parameter of matroids, is the number of recursive…

Contraction$^*$-depth is considered to be one of the analogues of graph tree-depth in the matroid setting. In this paper, we investigate structural properties of contraction$^*$-depth of matroids representable over finite fields and…

In previous work we provided a method for eliminating cuts in non-wellfounded proofs with a local-progress condition, these being the simplest kind of non-wellfounded proofs. The method consisted of splitting the proof into nicely behaved…

The splitting principle states that morphisms in a derived category do not "split" accidentally. This has been successsfully applied in several characterizations of rational, DB, and other singularities. In this article I prove a general…

Cloaking is a method of making obstacles undetectable. Here we cloak unit cells of a magnetic pattern squeezed into an otherwise periodic pattern from a magnetically driven colloidal flow. We apply a time-periodic external magnetic field…

Brylawski and Seymour independently proved that if $M$ is a connected matroid with a connected minor $N$, and $e \in E(M) - E(N)$, then $M \backslash e$ or $M / e$ is connected having $N$ as a minor. This paper proves an analogous but…

The singleton and doubleton minors of a polymatroid $\rho$ encode a surprising amount of information about the structural complexity of $\rho$. Given any polymatroid $\rho$, we can subtract from it a maximally-separated polymatroid,…

The Tutte polynomial for matroids is not directly applicable to polymatroids. For instance, deletion-contraction properties do not hold. We construct a polynomial for polymatroids which behaves similarly to the Tutte polynomial of a…

We generalize an earlier result of Segev, which shows that {\em some\/} component in a minimal counterexample to Quillen's conjecture must admit an outer automorphism. We show in fact that {\em every\/} component must admit an outer…

Given a matroid together with a coloring of its ground set, a subset of its elements is called rainbow colored if no two of its elements have the same color. We show that if a binary matroid of rank $r$ is colored with exactly $r$ colors,…

We call a matroid element "loose" if it is contained in no circuits of size less than the rank of the matroid. A matroid in which all elements are loose is a paving matroid. Acketa determined all binary paving matroids, while Oxley…

We show that a determinantal ideal generated by $t$-minors does not contain any nonzero polynomials with $t!/2$ or fewer terms. Geometrically this means that any nonzero polynomial vanishing on all matrices of rank at most $t-1$ has more…

Starting with any nondegenerate triangle we can use a well defined interior point of the triangle to subdivide it into six smaller triangles. We can repeat this process with each new triangle, and continue doing so over and over. We show…

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…

We prove that the non-regular binary matroids with no $P_9^*$-minor have linear growth rate and the maximum size binary matroids with no $P_9^*$-minor are graphic. The main technique in the proof is the Strong Splitter Theorem using which…

We consider the situation that M and N are 3-connected matroids such that |E(N)| > 3 and C* is a cocircuit of M with the property that M/y has an N-minor for some y in C*. We show that either there is an element x in C* such that si(M/x) or…

We settle three problems from the literature on stable and real zero polynomials and their connection to matroid theory. We disprove the weak real zero amalgamation conjecture by Schweighofer and the second author. We disprove a conjecture…

Our splitter theorem for internally 4-connected binary matroids studies pairs of the form (M,N), where N and M are internally 4-connected binary matroids, M has a proper N-minor, and if M' is an internally 4-connected matroid such that M…