Orientable arithmetic matroids

The theory of matroids has been generalized to oriented matroids and, recently, to arithmetic matroids. We want to give a definition of “oriented arithmetic matroid” and prove some properties like the “uniqueness of orientation”.     

Oriented matroids and multiply ordered sets

The many different axiomatizations for matroids all have their uses. In this paper we show that Gutierrez Novoa's n-ordered sets are cryptomorphically the same as the oriented matroids, thereby establishing the existence of an axiomatization for oriented matroids in which the “oriented” bases of the matroid are the objects of paramount importance.     

Kuratowski's and Wagner's theorems for matroids

In an earlier paper we proved the following theorem, which provides a strengthening of Tutte's well-known characterization of regular (totally unimodular) matroids: A binary matroid is regular if it does not have the Fano matroid or its dual as a series-minor (parallel-minor). In this paper we prove two theorems (Theorems 5.1 and 6.1) which provide the same kind of strengthening for Tutte's characterization of the graphic matroids (i.e., bond-matroids). One interesting aspect of these theorems is the introduction of the matroids of “type R”. It turns out that these matroids are, in at least two different senses, the smallest regular matroids which are neither graphic nor cographic (Theorems 6.2 and 6.3).     

Signed graphs

A signed graph is a graph with a sign attached to each arc. This article introduces the matroids of signed graphs, which generalize both the polygon matroids and the even-circle (or unoriented cycle) matroids of ordinary graphs. The concepts of balance, switching, restriction and contraction, double covering graphs, and linear representation of signed graphs are treated in terms of the matroid, and a matrix-tree theorem for signed graphs is proved. The examples treated include the all-positive and all-negative graphs (whose matroids are the polygon and even-circle matroids), sign-symmetric graphs (related to the classical root systems), and signed complete graphs (equivalent to two-graphs).Replacing the sign group by an arbitrary group leads to voltage graphs. Most of our results on signed graphs extend to all voltage graphs.     

Gammoids and transversal matroids

The two main results of this paper identify the “strict gammoids” of Mason [7] with duals of transvesal matroids, and gammoids in general with contractions of transversal matroids. Both theorems derive from a fundamental construction which we also use, inter alia, to establish a duality between the graph theorems of Menger and König.     

On the complexity of packing rainbow spanning trees

One of the most important questions in matroid optimization is to find disjoint common bases of two matroids. The significance of the problem is well-illustrated by the long list of conjectures that can be formulated as special cases. Bérczi and Schwarcz showed that the problem is hard in general, therefore identifying the borderline between tractable and intractable instances is of interest.In the present paper, we study the special case when one of the matroids is a partition matroid while the other one is a graphic matroid. This setting is equivalent to the problem of packing rainbow spanning trees, an extension of the problem of packing arborescences in directed graphs which was answered by Edmonds' seminal result on disjoint arborescences. We complement his result by showing that it is NP-complete to decide whether an edge-colored graph contains two disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Our complexity result holds even for the very special case when the graph is the union of two spanning trees and each color class contains exactly two edges. As a corollary, we give a negative answer to a question on the decomposition of oriented k-partition-connected digraphs.     

Basis-Transitive Matroids

We consider the problem of classifying all finite basis-transitive matroids and reduce it to the classification of the finite basis-transitive and point-primitive simple matroids (or geometric lattices, or dimensional linear spaces). Our main result shows how a basis- and point-transitive simple matroid is decomposed into a so-called supersum. In particular each block of imprimitivity bears the structure of two closely related simple matroids, and the set of blocks of imprimitivity bears the structure of a point- and basis-transitive matroid.     

Orientability of matroids

In this paper we define oriented matroids and develop their fundamental properties, which lead to generalizations of known results concerning directed graphs, convex polytopes, and linear programming. Duals and minors of oriented matroids are defined. It is shown that every coordinatization (representation) of a matroid over an ordered field induces an orientation of the matroid. Examples of matroids that are orientable but not coordinatizable and of matroids that are not orientable are presented. We show that a binary matroid is orientable if and only if it is unimodular (regular), and that every unimodular matroid has an orientation that is induced by a coordinatization and is unique in a certain straightforward sense.     

A decomposition theory for matroids. I. General results

A new matroid decomposition with several attractive properties leads to a new theorem of alternatives for matroids. A strengthened version of this theorem for binary matroids says roughly that to any binary matroid at least one of the following statements must apply: (1) the matroid is decomposable, (2) several elements can be removed (in any order) without destroying 3-connectivity, (3) the matroid belongs to one of 2 well-specified classes or has 10 elements or less. The latter theorem is easily specialized to graphic matroids. These theorems seem particularly useful for the determination of minimal violation matroids, a subject discussed in part II.     

Binary signed-graphic matroids: Representations and recognition algorithms

Recognition algorithms determining whether a given matroid is binary signed-graphic or not are presented in this work. Depending on whether the input is a cographic, a binary or a general matroid different algorithms are provided utilizing mainly decomposition results for the class of signed-graphic matroids. Finally, in order to devise such algorithms, necessary results regarding the representability of signed-graphic matroids in various fields are also given.     

A rough set approach to the characterization of transversal matroids

Rough sets are efficient for data pre-processing during data mining. However, some important problems such as attribute reduction in rough sets are NP-hard and the algorithms required to solve them are mostly greedy ones. The transversal matroid is an important part of matroid theory, which provides well-established platforms for greedy algorithms. In this study, we investigate transversal matroids using the rough set approach. First, we construct a covering induced by a family of subsets and we propose the approximation operators and upper approximation number based on this covering. We present a sufficient condition under which a subset is a partial transversal, and also a necessary condition. Furthermore, we characterize the transversal matroid with the covering-based approximation operator and construct some types of circuits. Second, we explore the relationships between closure operators in transversal matroids and upper approximation operators based on the covering induced by a family of subsets. Finally, we study two types of axiomatic characterizations of the covering approximation operators based on the set theory and matroid theory, respectively. These results provide more methods for investigating the combination of transversal matroids with rough sets.     

Coloring by two-way independent sets

The paper stems from an attempt to investigate a somewhat mysterious phenomenon: conditions which suffice for the existence of a “large” set satisfying certain conditions (e.g., a large independent set in a graph) often suffice (or at least are conjectured to suffice) for the existence of a covering of the ground set by few sets satisfying these conditions (in the example of independent sets in a graph this means that the graph has small chromatic number). We consider two conjectures of this type, on coloring by sets which are “two-way independent”, in the sense of belonging to a matroid and at the same time being independent in a graph sharing its ground set with the matroid. We prove these conjectures for matroids of rank 2. We also consider dual conjectures, on packing bases of a matroid, which are independent in a given graph.     

A branching greedoid for multiply-rooted graphs and digraphs

Two combinatorial structures which describe the branchings in a graph are graphic matroids and undirected branching greedoids. We introduce a new class of greedoids which connects these two structures. We also apply these greedoids to directed graphs to consider a matroid defined on a directed graph. Finally, we obtain a formula for the greedoid characteristic polynomial for multiply-rooted directed trees which can be determined from the vertices.     

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.     

On Tutte polynomial expansion formulas in perspectives of matroids and oriented matroids

We introduce the active partition of the ground set of an oriented matroid perspective (or morphism, or quotient, or strong map) on a linearly ordered ground set. The reorientations obtained by arbitrarily reorienting parts of the active partition share the same active partition. This yields an equivalence relation for the set of reorientations of an oriented matroid perspective, whose classes are enumerated by coefficients of the Tutte polynomial, and a remarkable partition of the set of reorientations into Boolean lattices, from which we get a short direct proof of a 4-variable expansion formula for the Tutte polynomial in terms of orientation activities. This formula was given in the last unpublished preprint by Michel Las Vergnas; the above equivalence relation and notion of active partition generalize a former construction in oriented matroids by Michel Las Vergnas and the author; and the possibility of such a proof technique in perspectives was announced in the aforementioned preprint. We also briefly highlight how the 5-variable expansion of the Tutte polynomial in terms of subset activities in matroid perspectives comes in a similar way from the known partition of the power set of the ground set into Boolean lattices related to subset activities (and we complete the proof with a property which was missing in the literature). In particular, the paper applies to matroids and oriented matroids on a linearly ordered ground set, and applies to graph and directed graph homomorphisms on a linearly ordered edge-set.     

Matroid matching and some applications

The polymatroid matching problem, also known as the matchoid problem or the matroid parity problem, is polynomially unsolvable in general but solvable for linear matroids. The solution for linear matroids is analysed and results concerning arbitrary matroids are given from which the linear case follows immediately. The same general result is then applied to find a maximum circuitfree partial hypergraph of a 3-uniform hypergraph, to generalize a theorem of Mader on packing openly disjoint paths starting and ending in a given set, and to study a problem in structural rigidity.     

Euler's relation,möbius functions and matroid identities

We give a short combinatorial proof of the Euler relation for convex polytopes in the context of oriented matroids. Using counting arguments we derive from the Euler relation several identities holding in the lattice of flats of an oriented matroid. These identities are proven for any matroid by Möbius inversion.     

The max-flow min-cut property of two-dimensional affine convex geometries

In a matroid, (X,e) is a rooted circuit if X is a set not containing element e and X∪{e} is a circuit. We call X a broken circuit of e. A broken circuit clutter is the collection of broken circuits of a fixed element. Seymour [The matroids with the max-flow min-cut property, J. Combinatorial Theory B 23 (1977) 189-222] proved that a broken circuit clutter of a binary matroid has the max-flow min-cut property if and only if it does not contain a minor isomorphic to Q₆. We shall present an analogue of this result in affine convex geometries. Precisely, we shall show that a broken circuit clutter of an element e in a convex geometry arising from two-dimensional point configuration has the max-flow min-cut property if and only if the configuration has no subset forming a ‘Pentagon’ configuration with center e.Firstly we introduce the notion of closed set systems. This leads to a common generalization of rooted circuits both of matroids and convex geometries (antimatroids). We further study some properties of affine convex geometries and their broken circuit clutters.     

基于覆盖上近似算子的拟阵结构及其关系

Covering-based rough sets,as a technique of granular computing,can be a useful tool for dealing with inexact,uncertain or vague knowledge in information systems.Matroids generalize linear independence in vector spaces,graph theory and provide well established platforms for greedy algorithm design.In this paper,we construct three types of matroidal structures of covering-based rough sets.Moreover,through these three types of matroids,we study the relationships among these matroids induced by six types of covering-based upper approximation operators.First,we construct three families of sets by indiscernible neighborhoods,neighborhoods and close friends,respectively.Moreover,we prove that they satisfy independent set axioms of matroids.In this way,three types of matroidal structures of covering-based rough sets are constructed.Secondly,we study some characteristics of the three types of matroid,such as dependent sets,circuits,rank function and closure.Finally,by comparing independent sets,we study relationships among these matroids induced by six types of covering-based upper approximation operators.     

Subgraphs as circuits and bases of matroids

As is well known, the cycles of any given graph G may be regarded as the circuits of a matroid defined on the edge set of G. The question of whether other families of connected graphs exist such that, given any graph G, the subgraphs of G isomorphic to some member of the family may be regarded as the circuits of a matroid defined on the edge set of G led us, in two other papers, to the proof of some results concerning properties of the cycles when regarded as circuits of such matroids. Here we prove that the wheels share many of these properties with the cycles. Moreover, properties of subgraphs which may be regarded as bases of such matroids are also investigated.