On the regularity of orientable matroids

We present two characterizations of regular matroids among orientable matroids and use them to give a measure of “how far” an orientable matroid is from being regular.     

Ore-type and Dirac-type theorems for matroids

Let M be a connected binary matroid having no -minor. Let be a collection of cocircuits of M. We prove there is a circuit intersecting all cocircuits of if either one of two things hold:

(i) For any two disjoint cocircuits and in it holds that .

(ii) For any two disjoint cocircuits and in it holds that .

Part (ii) implies Ore's Theorem, a well-known theorem giving sufficient conditions for the existence of a hamilton cycle in a graph. As an application of part (i), it is shown that if M is a k-connected regular matroid and has cocircumference c^*2k, then there is a circuit which intersects each cocircuit of size c^*−k+2 or greater.We also extend a theorem of Dirac for graphs by showing that for any k-connected binary matroid M having no -minor, it holds that for any k cocircuits of M there is a circuit which intersects them.     

Facial structures of lattice path matroid polytopes

A lattice path matroid is a transversal matroid corresponding to a pair of lattice paths on the plane. A matroid base polytope is the polytope whose vertices are the incidence vectors of the bases of the given matroid. In this paper, we study the facial structures of matroid base polytopes corresponding to lattice path matroids. In the case of a border strip, we show that all faces of a lattice path matroid polytope can be described by certain subsets of deletions, contractions, and direct sums. In particular, we express them in terms of the lattice path obtained from the border strip. Subsequently, the facial structures of a lattice path matroid polytope for a general case are explained in terms of certain tilings of skew shapes inside the given region.     

On the reliability roots of simplicial complexes and matroids

Assume that the vertices of a graph $G$ are always operational, but the edges of $G$ fail independently with probability $q\in [0,1]$. The all-terminal reliability of $G$ is the probability that the resulting subgraph is connected. The all-terminal reliability can be formulated into a polynomial in $q$, and it was conjectured that all the roots of (nonzero) reliability polynomials fall inside the closed unit disk. It has since been shown that there exist some connected graphs which have their reliability roots outside the closed unit disk, but these examples seem to be few and far between, and the roots are only barely outside the disk. In this paper we generalize the notion of reliability to simplicial complexes and matroids and investigate when the roots fall inside the closed unit disk. We show that such is the case for matroids of rank 3 and paving matroids of rank 4. We also prove that the reliability roots of shellable complexes are dense in the complex plane, and that the real reliability roots of any matroid lie in $[?1,0)\cup \left\{1\right\}$. Finally, we also show that the reliability roots of thickenings of the Fano matroid can lie outside the unit disk.     

On the Circuit-cocircuit Intersection Conjecture

Oxley has conjectured that for k≥4, if a matroid M has a k-element set that is the intersection of a circuit and a cocircuit, then M has a (k−2)-element set that is the intersection of a circuit and a cocircuit. In this paper we prove a stronger version of this conjecture for regular matroids. We also show that the stronger result does not hold for binary matroids. The second author was partially supported by CNPq (grant no 302195/02-5) and the ProNEx/CNPq (grant no 664107/97-4).     

Cycles in Circuit Graphs of Matroids

Let G be the circuit graph of any connected matroid. We prove that G is edge-pancyclic if it has at least three vertices. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation(60673047) and the Doctoral Program Foundation of Education Ministry (20040422004) of China.     

Unipancyclic matroids

Analogous to the concept of uniquely pancyclic graphs, we define a uniquely pancyclic (UPC) matroid of rank $r$ to be a (simple) rank-$r$ matroid containing exactly one circuit of each length $?$ for $3\le ?\le r+1$. Our discussion addresses the existence of graphic, binary, and transversal representations of UPC matroids. Using Shi’s results, which catalogued exactly seven non-isomorphic UPC graphs, we produce a nongraphic binary UPC matroid of rank 24. We consider properties of binary UPC matroids in general, and prove that all binary UPC matroids have a connectivity of $2$.     

Removing circuits in 3-connected binary matroids

For a k-connected graph or matroid M, where k is a fixed positive integer, we say that a subset X of E(M) is k-removable provided M?X is k-connected. In this paper, we obtain a sharp condition on the size of a 3-connected binary matroid to have a 3-removable circuit.     

Boolean sublattices connected with minimization problems on matroids

It is noted that the decomposition of a network presented by J.C. Picard and M. Queyranne through an algorithmic argument may be defined from a general lattice-theoretic result for more general problems for which the equalities of maximum-flow minimum-cut type hold.     

Matroids with many common bases

Lemos (Discrete Math. 240 (2001) 271–276) proved a conjecture of Mills (Discrete Math. 203 (1999) 195–205): for two (k+1)-connected matroids whose symmetric difference between their collections of bases has size at most k, there is a matroid that is obtained from one of these matroids by relaxing n₁ circuit-hyperplanes and from the other by relaxing n₂ circuit-hyperplanes, where n₁ and n₂ are non-negative integers such that n₁+n₂k. In this paper, we prove a similar result, where the hypothesis of the matroids being k-connected is replaced by the weaker hypothesis of being vertically k-connected.     

Elements belonging to triangles in 3-connected matroids

An element e of a 3-connected matroid M is said to be superfluous provided M/e is 3-connected. In this paper, we show that a 3-connected matroid M with exactly k superfluous elements has at least

     

Thin sums matroids and duality

Building on the recent axiomatisation of infinite matroids with duality, we present a theory of representability for infinite matroids. This notion of representability allows for infinite sums, and is preserved under duality.     

关于强映射下几何格的一个公开问题

In this paper, some properties of the image of the geometric lattice of a graphic matroid under a strong map are discussed, and a negative answer to the related open question of Welsh‘s book is given.     

Persistency in combinatorial optimization problems on matroids

Optimization problems on matroids are generalizations of such important combinatorial optimization problems like the problem of minimum spanning tree of a graph, the bipartite matching problem, flow problems, etc. We analyze algorithms for finding the maximum weight independent set of a matroid and for finding a maximum cardinality intersection of two matroids and extend them to obtain the so-called “persistency” partition of the basic set of the matroid, where contain elements belonging to all optimum solutions; contain elements not belonging to any optimum solution; contain elements that belong to some but not to all optimum solutions.     

Solving the linear matroid parity problem as a sequence of matroid intersection problems

In this paper, we present an O(r ⁴ n) algorithm for the linear matroid parity problem. Our solution technique is to introduce a modest generalization, the non-simple parity problem, and identify an important subclass of non-simple parity problems called easy parity problems which can be solved as matroid intersection problems. We then show how to solve any linear matroid parity problem parametrically as a sequence of easy parity problems.In contrast to other algorithmic work on this problem, we focus on general structural properties of dual solutions rather than on local primal structures. In a companion paper, we develop these ideas into a duality theory for the parity problem.     

拟阵与概念格的关系

本文以构造的方式建立起拟阵与概念格的联系,得到在同构意义下每个拟阵是一个概念格,但反之不然的结论;该结论使得利用概念格的性质研究拟阵成为现实,特别为将建造概念格的算法尤其是已计算机化的算法应用于求取拟阵奠定了基础,也为拟阵论成为研究概念格性质的辅助工具打下基础．