Inequivalent representations of matroids over prime fields

It is proved that for each prime field GF(p)$\mathit{GF}(p)$, there is an integer _np$n_p$ such that a 4-connected matroid has at most _np$n_p$ inequivalent representations over GF(p)$\mathit{GF}(p)$. We also prove a stronger theorem that obtains the same conclusion for matroids satisfying a connectivity condition, intermediate between 3-connectivity and 4-connectivity that we term “k-coherence”.