English

Orthogonal matroids over tracts

Combinatorics 2025-08-13 v2

Abstract

We generalize Baker-Bowler's theory of matroids over tracts to orthogonal matroids, define orthogonal matroids with coefficients in tracts in terms of Wick functions, orthogonal signatures, circuit sets, and orthogonal vector sets, and establish basic properties on functoriality, duality, and minors. Our cryptomorphic definitions of orthogonal matroids over tracts provide proofs of several representation theorems for orthogonal matroids. In particular, we give a new proof that an orthogonal matroid is regular if and only if it is representable over F2\mathbb{F}_2 and F3\mathbb{F}_3, which was originally shown by Geelen, and we prove that an orthogonal matroid is representable over the sixth-root-of-unity partial field if and only if it is representable over F3\mathbb{F}_3 and F4\mathbb{F}_4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.05353,
  title  = {Orthogonal matroids over tracts},
  author = {Tong Jin and Donggyu Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.05353},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

36 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:09:31.235Z