English

Decompositions of q-Matroids Using Cyclic Flats

Combinatorics 2023-02-23 v2 Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

We study the direct sum of q-matroids by way of their cyclic flats. Using that the rank function of a q-matroid is fully determined by the cyclic flats and their ranks, we show that the cyclic flats of the direct sum of two q-matroids are exactly all the direct sums of the cyclic flats of the two summands. This simplifies the rank function of the direct sum significantly. A q-matroid is called irreducible if it cannot be written as a (non-trivial) direct sum. We provide a characterization of irreducibility in terms of the cyclic flats and show that every q-matroid can be decomposed into a direct sum of irreducible q-matroids, which are unique up to equivalence.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.02260,
  title  = {Decompositions of q-Matroids Using Cyclic Flats},
  author = {Heide Gluesing-Luerssen and Benjamin Jany},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.02260},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:32:09.212Z