English

Mutations and (Non-)Euclideaness in oriented matroids

Combinatorics 2025-02-20 v2 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We call an oriented matroid Mandel if it has an extension in general position which makes all programs with that extension Euclidean. If LL is the minimum number of mutations adjacent to an element of the groundset, we call an oriented matroid Las Vergnas if L>0L > 0. If Oproperty\frak{O}_{\mathcal{property}} is the class of oriented matroids having a certain property, it holds OOLasVergnasOMandelOEuclideanOrealizable.\frak{O} \supset \frak{O}_{\mathcal{Las Vergnas}} \supset \frak{O}_{\mathcal{Mandel}} \supset \frak{O}_{\mathcal{Euclidean}} \supset \frak{O}_{\mathcal{realizable}}. All these inclusions are proper, we give explicit proofs/examples for the parts of this chain that were not known. For realizable hyperplane arrangements of rank rr we have L=rL = r which was proved by Shannon. Under the assumption that a (modified) intersection property holds we give an analogon to Shannons proof and show that uniform rank 44 Euclidean oriented matroids with that property have L=4L = 4. Using the fact that the lexicographic extension creates and destroys certain mutations, we show that for Euclidean oriented matroids holds L3L \ge 3. We give a survey of preservation of Euclideaness and prove that Euclideaness remains after a certain type of mutation-flips. This yields that a path in the mutation graph from a Euclidean oriented matroid to a totally non-Euclidean oriented matroid (which has no Euclidean oriented matroid programs) must have at least three mutation-flips. Finally, a minimal non-Euclidean or rank 44 uniform oriented matroid is Mandel if it is connected to a Euclidean oriented matroid via one mutation-flip, hence we get many examples for Non-Euclidean but Mandel oriented matroids and have L3L \le 3 for those of rank 44.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.12951,
  title  = {Mutations and (Non-)Euclideaness in oriented matroids},
  author = {Michael Wilhelmi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.12951},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

29 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:13:43.259Z