We determine the smallest simple triangle-free binary matroids that have no five-element independent flat. This solves a special case of a conjecture of Nelson and Norin.
In this note we investigate some matroid minor structure results. In particular, we present sufficient conditions, in terms of {\em triangles}, for a matroid to have either $U_{2,4}$ or $F_7$ or $M(K_5)$ as a minor.
Let $M$ be an internally $4$-connected binary matroid with every element in three triangles. Then $M$ has at least four elements $e$ such that si$(M/e)$ is internally 4-connected.
A matroid $N$ is said to be triangle-rounded in a class of matroids $\mathcal{M}$ if each $3$-connected matroid $M\in \mathcal{M}$ with a triangle $T$ and an $N$-minor has an $N$-minor with $T$ as triangle. Reid gave a result useful to identify such matroids as stated next: suppose that $M$ is a binary $3$-connected matroid with a $3$-connected minor $N$, $T$ is a triangle of $M$ and $e\in T\cap E(N)$; then $M$ has a $3$-connected minor $M'$ with an $N$-minor such that $T$ is a triangle of $M'$ and $|E(M')|\le |E(N)|+2$. We strengthen this result by dropping the condition that such element $e$…
A simple binary matroid, viewed as a restriction of a finite binary projective geometry $PG(n-1,2)$, is $I_{1,t}$-free if for any rank-$t$ flat of $PG(n-1,2)$, its intersection with the matroid is not a one-element set. In this paper, we show that the simple $I_{1,t}$-free and triangle-free binary matroids have bounded critical number for any $t \geq 1$.
We prove, by means of an exact structural description, that every simple triangle-free binary matroid $M$ with $|M| > \tfrac{33}{128}2^{r(M)}$ has critical number at most $2$.
A simple binary matroid is called $I_4$-free if none of its rank-4 flats are independent sets. These objects can be equivalently defined as the sets $E$ of points in $PG(n-1,2)$ for which $|E \cap F|$ is not a basis of $F$ for any four-dimensional flat $F$. We prove a decomposition theorem that exactly determines the structure of all $I_4$-free and triangle-free matroids. In particular, our theorem implies that the $I_4$-free and triangle-free matroids have critical number at most $2$.
We show that a simple rank-$r$ matroid with no $(t+1)$-element independent flat has at least as many elements as the matroid $M_{r,t}$ defined as the direct sum of $t$ binary projective geometries whose ranks pairwise differ by at most $1$. We also show for $r \ge 2t$ that $M_{r,t}$ is the unique example for which equality holds.
We show that, for each real number $ε> 0$ there is an integer $c$ such that, if $M$ is a simple triangle-free binary matroid with $|M| \ge (\tfrac{1}{4} + ε) 2^{r(M)}$, then $M$ has critical number at most $c$. We also give a construction showing that no such result holds for any real number less than $\tfrac{1}{4}$. This shows that the "critical threshold" for the triangle is $\tfrac 1 4$. We extend the notion of critical threshold to every simple binary matroid $N$ and conjecture that, if $N$ has critical number $c\ge 3$, then $N$ has critical threshold $1-i\cdot 2^{-c}$ for some $i\in \{2,3…
The class of cographs or complement-reducible graphs is the class of graphs that can be generated from $K_1$ using the operations of disjoint union and complementation. By analogy, this paper introduces the class of binary comatroids as the class of matroids that can be generated from the empty matroid using the operations of direct sum and taking complements inside of binary projective space. We show that a proper flat of a binary comatroid is a binary comatroid. Our main result identifies those binary non-comatroids for which every proper flat is a binary comatroid. The paper also proves the…
In this paper we investigate a family of matroids introduced by Ardila and Billey to study one-dimensional intersections of complete flag arrangements of $\mathbb{C}^n$. The set of lattice points $P_n$ inside the equilateral triangle $S_n$ obtained by intersecting the nonnegative cone of $\mathbb{R}^3$ with the affine hyperplane $x_1 + x_2 + x_3 = n-1$ is the ground set of a matroid $\mathcal{T}_n$ whose independent sets are the subsets $S$ of $P_n$ satisfying that $|S \cap P| \le k$ for each translation $P$ of the set $P_k$. Here we study the structure of the matroids $\mathcal{T}_n$ in conne…
Let $M$ be a matroid and let $Q$, $R$, $S$ and $T$ be subsets of the ground set such that the smallest separation that separates $Q$ from $R$ has order $k$ and the smallest separation that separates $S$ from $T$ has order $l$. We prove that if $E(M)-(Q\cup R\cup S\cup T)$ is sufficiently large, then there is an element $e$ of $M$ such that, in one of $M\backslash e$ or $M/e$, both connectivities are preserved.
In this paper we describe a physical problem, based on electromagnetic fields, whose topological constraints are higher dimensional versions of Kirchhoff's laws, involving $2-$ simplicial complexes embedded in $\mathbb{R} ^3$ rather than graphs. However, we show that, for the skeleton of this complex, involving only triangles and edges, we can build a matroid dual which is a graph. On this graph we build an `ordinary' electrical circuit, solving which we obtain the solution to our original problem. Construction of this graph is through a `sliding' algorithm which simulates sliding on the surfa…
For each integer $n \geq 2$, we prove that, if $M$ is a simple rank-$r$ $PG(n-1,2)$-free binary matroid with $|M|>\left(1-\frac{3}{2^n}\right)2^r$, then there is a triangle-free corank-$(n-2)$ flat of $M$.
Let $G$ be a triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices with adjacency matrix eigenvalues $μ_1(G)\geq μ_2(G)\geq \dots \geq μ_n(G)$. In this paper we study the quantity $$μ_1(G)+μ_n(G).$$ We prove that for any triangle-free graph $G$ we have $$μ_1(G)+μ_n(G)\leq (3-2\sqrt{2})n.$$ This was proved for regular graphs by Brandt, we show that the condition on regularity is not necessary. We also prove that among triangle-free strongly regular graphs the Higman-Sims graph achieves the maximum of $$\frac{μ_1(G)+μ_n(G)}{n}.$$
A three-tope committee K* for a simple oriented matroid M is a 3-subset of its maximal covectors such that every positive halfspace of M contains at least two topes from K*. We consider three-tope committees as the vertex sets of triangles in graphs associated with the topes and enumerate them making use of the properties of the poset of convex subsets of the ground set of M.
The prism graph is the dual of the complete graph on five vertices with an edge deleted, $K_5\backslash e$. In this paper we determine the class of binary matroids with no prism minor. The motivation for this problem is the 1963 result by Dirac where he identified the simple 3-connected graphs with no minor isomorphic to the prism graph. We prove that besides Dirac's infinite families of graphs and four infinite families of non-regular matroids determined by Oxley, there are only three possibilities for a matroid in this class: it is isomorphic to the dual of the generalized parallel connectio…
The cogirth, $g^\ast(M)$, of a matroid $M$ is the size of a smallest cocircuit of $M$. Finding the cogirth of a graphic matroid can be done in polynomial time, but Vardy showed in 1997 that it is NP-hard to find the cogirth of a binary matroid. In this paper, we show that $g^\ast(M)\leq \frac{1}{2}\vert E(M)\vert$ when $M$ is binary, unless $M$ simplifies to a projective geometry. We also show that, when equality holds, $M$ simplifies to a Bose-Burton geometry, that is, a matroid of the form $PG(r-1,2)-PG(k-1,2)$. These results extend to matroids representable over arbitrary finite fields.
Let M and N be internally 4-connected binary matroids such that M has a proper N-minor, and |E(N)| is at least seven. As part of our project to develop a splitter theorem for internally 4-connected binary matroids, we prove the following result: if M\e has no N-minor whenever e is in a triangle of M, and M/e has no N-minor whenever e is in a triad of M, then M has a minor, M', such that M' is internally 4-connected with an N-minor, and 0 < |E(M)|-|E(M')| < 3.
The heterochromatic number hc(H) of a non-empty hypergraph H is the smallest integer k such that for every colouring of the vertices of H with exactly k colours, there is a hyperedge of H all of whose vertices have different colours. We denote by nu(H) the number of vertices of H and by tau(H) the size of the smallest set containing at least two vertices of each hyperedge of H. For a complete geometric graph G with n > 2 vertices let H = H(G) be the hypergraph whose vertices are the edges of G and whose hyperedges are the edge sets of plane spanning trees of G. We prove that if G has at most o…
Starting with any nondegenerate triangle we can use a well defined interior point of the triangle to subdivide it into six smaller triangles. We can repeat this process with each new triangle, and continue doing so over and over. We show that starting with any arbitrary triangle, the resulting set of triangles formed by this process contains triangles arbitrarily close (up to similarity) any given triangle when the point that we use to subdivide is the incenter. We also show that the smallest angle in a "typical" triangle after repeated subdivision for many generations does not have the smalle…
Tuza (A conjecture, in Proceedings of the Colloquia Mathematica Societatis Janos Bolyai, 1981) conjectured that $τ(G) \le 2ν(G)$ for all graphs $G$, where $τ(G)$ is the minimum size of an edge set whose removal makes $G$ triangle-free, and $ν(G)$ is the maximum size of a collection of pairwise edge-disjoint triangles. Here, we generalise Tuza's conjecture to simple binary matroids that do not contain the Fano plane as a restriction. We prove that the geometric version of the conjecture holds for cographic matroids.
In this paper we describe a parallel algorithm for generating all non-isomorphic rank $3$ simple matroids with a given multiplicity vector. We apply our implementation in the HPC version of GAP to generate all rank $3$ simple matroids with at most $14$ atoms and a splitting characteristic polynomial. We have stored the resulting matroids alongside with various useful invariants in a publicly available, ArangoDB-powered database. As a byproduct we show that the smallest divisionally free rank $3$ arrangement which is not inductively free has $14$ hyperplanes and exists in all characteristics di…
Steinberg and Tovey proved that every n-vertex planar triangle-free graph has an independent set of size at least (n+1)/3, and described an infinite class of tight examples. We show that all n-vertex planar triangle-free graphs except for this one infinite class have independent sets of size at least (n+2)/3.
Let $M$ be a $3$-connected binary matroid; $M$ is internally $4$-connected if one side of every $3$-separation is a triangle or a triad, and $M$ is $(4,4,S)$-connected if one side of every $3$-separation is a triangle, a triad, or a $4$-element fan. Assume $M$ is internally $4$-connected and that neither $M$ nor its dual is a cubic Möbius or planar ladder or a certain coextension thereof. Let $N$ be an internally $4$-connected proper minor of $M$. Our aim is to show that $M$ has a proper internally $4$-connected minor with an $N$-minor that can be obtained from $M$ either by removing at most f…
Let $M$ be a $3$-connected binary matroid; $M$ is called internally $4$-connected if one side of every $3$-separation is a triangle or a triad, and $M$ is $(4,4,S)$-connected if one side of every $3$-separation is a triangle, a triad, or a $4$-element fan. Assume $M$ is internally $4$-connected and that neither $M$ nor its dual is a cubic Möbius or planar ladder or a certain coextension thereof. Let $N$ be an internally $4$-connected proper minor of $M$. Our aim is to show that $M$ has a proper internally $4$-connected minor with an $N$-minor that can be obtained from $M$ either by removing at…
In this paper we prove two main results about obstruction to graph planarity. One is that, if $G$ is a 3-connected graph with a $K_5$-minor and $T$ is a triangle of $G$, then $G$ has a $K_5$-minor $H$, such that $E(T)\cont E(H)$. Other is that if $G$ is a 3-connected simple non-planar graph not isomorphic to $K_5$ and $e,f\in E(G)$, then $G$ has a minor $H$ such that $e,f\in E(H)$ and, up to isomorphisms, $H$ is one of the four non-isomorphic simple graphs obtained from $K_{3,3}$ by the addiction of \,0, 1 or 2 edges. We generalize this second result to the class of the regular matroids.
A graph with chromatic number $k$ is called $k$-chromatic. Using computational methods, we show that the smallest triangle-free 6-chromatic graphs have at least 32 and at most 40 vertices. We also determine the complete set of all triangle-free 5-chromatic graphs up to 24 vertices. This implies that Reed's conjecture holds for triangle-free graphs up to at least this order. We also establish that the smallest regular triangle-free 5-chromatic graphs have 24 vertices. Finally, we show that the smallest 5-chromatic graphs of girth at least 5 have at least 29 vertices and that the smallest 4-chro…
An orientation of a graph is semi-transitive if it is acyclic, and for any directed path $v_0\rightarrow v_1\rightarrow \cdots\rightarrow v_k$ either there is no arc between $v_0$ and $v_k$, or $v_i\rightarrow v_j$ is an arc for all $0\leq i<j\leq k$. An undirected graph is semi-transitive if it admits a semi-transitive orientation. Semi-transitive graphs generalize several important classes of graphs and they are precisely the class of word-representable graphs studied extensively in the literature. Determining if a triangle-free graph is semi-transitive is an NP-hard problem. The existence o…
We propose a framework for optimal $t$-matchings excluding the prescribed $t$-factors in bipartite graphs. The proposed framework is a generalization of the nonbipartite matching problem and includes several problems, such as the triangle-free $2$-matching, square-free $2$-matching, even factor, and arborescence problems. In this paper, we demonstrate a unified understanding of these problems by commonly extending previous important results. We solve our problem under a reasonable assumption, which is sufficiently broad to include the specific problems listed above. We first present a min-max …
A graph is (m,k)-colourable if its vertices can be coloured with m colours such that the maximum degree of the subgraph induced on the set of all vertices receiving the same colour is at most k. The k-defective chromatic number $χ_k(G)$ is the least positive integer $m$ for which graph G is (m,k)-colourable. Let f(m,k;tfp) be the smallest order of a triangle-free planar graph such that $χ_k(G)$=m. In this paper we show that f(3,1;tfp)=11.
Montassier, Raspaud, and Wang (2006) asked to find the smallest positive integers $d_0$ and $d_1$ such that planar graphs without $\{4,5\}$-cycles and $d^Δ\ge d_0$ are $3$-choosable and planar graphs without $\{4,5,6\}$-cycles and $d^Δ\ge d_1$ are $3$-choosable, where $d^Δ$ is the smallest distance between triangles. They showed that $2\le d_0\le 4$ and $d_1\le 3$. In this paper, we show that the following planar graphs are DP-3-colorable: (1) planar graphs without $\{4,5\}$-cycles and $d^Δ\ge 3$ are DP-$3$-colorable, and (2) planar graphs without $\{4,5,6\}$-cycles and $d^Δ\ge 2$ are DP-$3$-c…
For a simple digraph $G$ without directed triangles or digons, let $β(G)$ be the size of the smallest subset $X \subseteq E(G)$ such that $G\setminus X$ has no directed cycles, and let $γ(G)$ be the number of unordered pairs of nonadjacent vertices in $G$. In 2008, Chudnovsky, Seymour, and Sullivan showed that $β(G) \le γ(G)$, and conjectured that $β(G) \le γ(G)/2$. Recently, Dunkum, Hamburger, and Pór proved that $β(G) \le 0.88 γ(G)$. In this note, we prove that $β(G) \le 0.8616 γ(G)$.
The Ramsey number r(K_3,Q_n) is the smallest integer N such that every red-blue colouring of the edges of the complete graph K_N contains either a red n-dimensional hypercube, or a blue triangle. Almost thirty years ago, Burr and Erdős conjectured that r(K_3,Q_n) = 2^{n+1} - 1 for every n \in \N, but the first non-trivial upper bound was obtained only recently, by Conlon, Fox, Lee and Sudakov, who proved that r(K_3,Q_n) \le 7000 \cdot 2^n. Here we show that r(K_3,Q_n) = (1 + o(1)) 2^{n+1} as n \to \infty.
Computing distances in braid-move graphs, higher Bruhat orders, and oriented-matroid mutation graphs is NP-hard
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana(卢布尔雅那大学数学物理学院);Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Mechanics(数学、物理与力学研究所);Abelium d.o.o.(阿贝利乌姆有限公司)
Building on previous work of the author, for each finite triangle-free graph $\mathbf{G}$, we determine the equivalence relation on the copies of $\mathbf{G}$ inside the universal homogeneous triangle-free graph, $\mathcal{H}_3$, with the smallest number of equivalence classes so that each one of the classes persists in every isomorphic subcopy of $\mathcal{H}_3$. This characterizes the exact big Ramsey degrees of $\mathcal{H}_3$. It follows that the triangle-free Henson graph is a big Ramsey structure.
The distinguishing number $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest number of colors that is needed to color $G$ such that the only color preserving automorphism is the identity. We give a complete classification for all connected graphs $G$ of maximum valence $\triangle(G)=3$ and distinguishing number $D(G) = 3$. As one of the consequences we get that all infinite connected graphs with $\triangle(G)=3$ are 2-distinguishable.
A rectilinear drawing of a graph $G$ is optimal if it has the smallest number of crossings among all rectilinear drawings of $G$. In this paper it is shown that for $n\geq 8$, the second convex hull of every optimal rectilinear drawing of the complete graph $K_n$ is a triangle.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign(伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校);Iowa State University(爱荷华州立大学);McGill University(麦吉尔大学);Czech Technical University in Prague(布拉格捷克理工大学)
From among $ {n \choose 3}$ triangles with vertices chosen from $n$ points in the unit square, let $T$ be the one with the smallest area, and let $A$ be the area of $T$. Heilbronn's triangle problem asks for the maximum value assumed by $A$ over all choices of $n$ points. We consider the average-case: If the $n$ points are chosen independently and at random (with a uniform distribution), then there exist positive constants $c$ and $C$ such that $c/n^3 < μ_n < C/n^3$ for all large enough values of $n$, where $μ_n$ is the expectation of $A$. Moreover, $c/n^3 < A < C/n^3$, with probability close …
A note on vertex-critical induced subgraphs of shift graphs
University of West Bohemia(西波希米亚大学);CNRS(法国国家科学研究中心);IRIF(IRIF实验室);Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana(卢布尔雅那大学数学物理学院);Faculty of Information Studies in Novo Mesto(诺沃梅斯托信息研究学院);Rudolfovo – Science and Technology Centre(鲁多维福科学与技术中心);University of Southern Denmark(南丹麦大学)
A triangle-free graph $G$ is called read-$k$ when there exists a monotone Boolean formula $ϕ$ whose variables are the vertices of $G$ and whose minterms are precisely the edges of $G$, such that no variable occurs more than $k$ times in $ϕ$. The smallest such $k$ is called the readability of $G$. We exhibit a very simple class of bipartite chain graphs on $2n$ vertices with readability $Ω(\sqrt{\frac{\log n}{\log \log n}})$.
Exact certification of the coordinate fields of the triangle-free Exoo-Ismailescu unit-distance graphs EI17 and EI19 (HoG 51375, 51376): a solvable-non-solvable dichotomy (origami vs. S20) and the Laman-number conjecture
CEFET-RJ(里约热内卢联邦技术教育中心);Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)(里约热内卢州立大学)
We show that for $n \geq 3, n\ne 5$, in any partition of $\mathcal{P}(n)$, the set of all subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,\dots,n\}$, into $2^{n-2}-1$ parts, some part must contain a triangle --- three different subsets $A,B,C\subseteq [n]$ such that $A\cap B$, $A\cap C$, and $B\cap C$ have distinct representatives. This is sharp, since by placing two complementary pairs of sets into each partition class, we have a partition into $2^{n-2}$ triangle-free parts. We also address a more general Ramsey-type problem: for a given graph $G$, find (estimate) $f(n,G)$, the smallest number of colors needed for a c…
In 1995 Kim famously proved the Ramsey bound R(3,t) \ge c t^2/\log t by constructing an n-vertex graph that is triangle-free and has independence number at most C \sqrt{n \log n}. We extend this celebrated result, which is best possible up to the value of the constants, by approximately decomposing the complete graph K_n into a packing of such nearly optimal Ramsey R(3,t) graphs. More precisely, for any ε>0 we find an edge-disjoint collection (G_i)_i of n-vertex graphs G_i \subseteq K_n such that (a) each G_i is triangle-free and has independence number at most C_ε\sqrt{n \log n}, and (b) the …