In this paper we present a definition of oriented Lagrangian symplectic matroids and their representations. Classical concepts of orientation and this extension may both be thought of as stratifications of thin Schubert cells into unions of connected components. The definitions are made first in terms of a combinatorial axiomatisation, and then again in terms of elementary geometric properties of the Coxeter matroid polytope. We also generalise the concept of rank and signature of a quadratic form to symplectic Lagrangian matroids in a surprisingly natural way.
Matroids and semigraphoids are discrete structures abstracting and generalizing linear independence among vectors and conditional independence among random variables, respectively. Despite the different nature of conditional independence from linear independence, deep connections between these two areas are found and still undergoing active research. In this paper, we give a characterization of the embedding of matroids into conditional independence structures and its oriented counterpart, which lead to new axiom systems of matroids and oriented matroids.
The separation theorem of Kirchberger can be proven using a combination of Farkas' Lemma and Caratheodory's Theorem. Since those theorems are at the heart of oriented matroids, we are interested in a generalization of Kirchberger's Theorem to them. This has already been done for rank 3 oriented matroids. Here we prove it for complexes of oriented matroids, which are a generalization of oriented matroids.
Tropical oriented matroids were defined by Ardila and Develin in 2007 in analogy to (classical) oriented matroids. In this paper we present one tropical analogue for the Topological Representation Theorem.
In this paper we extend the theory of oriented matroids to Lagrangian orthogonal matroids and their representations, and give a completely natural transformation from a representation of a classical oriented matroid to a representation of the same oriented matroid considered as a Lagrangian orthogonal matroid. Classical concepts of orientation and this extension may both be thought of as stratifications of thin Schubert cells into unions of connected components.
We study the combinatorial properties of a tropical hyperplane arrangement. We define tropical oriented matroids, and prove that they share many of the properties of ordinary oriented matroids. We show that a tropical oriented matroid determines a subdivision of a product of two simplices, and conjecture that this correspondence is a bijection.
Oriented matroids (often called order types) are combinatorial structures that generalize point configurations, vector configurations, hyperplane arrangements, polyhedra, linear programs, and directed graphs. Oriented matroids have played a key role in combinatorics, computational geometry, and optimization. This paper surveys prior work and presents an update on the search for bounds on the diameter of the cocircuit graph of an oriented matroid. We review the diameter problem and show the diameter bounds of general oriented matroids reduce to those of uniform oriented matroids. We give the la…
We introduce a new axiomatization of matroid theory that requires the elimination property only among modular pairs of circuits, and we present a cryptomorphic phrasing thereof in terms of Crapo's axioms for flats. This new point of view leads to a corresponding strengthening of the circuit axioms for oriented matroids.
Tropical oriented matroids were defined by Ardila and Develin in 2007. They are a tropical analogue of classical oriented matroids in the sense that they encode the properties of the types of points in an arrangement of tropical hyperplanes -- in much the same way as the covectors of (classical) oriented matroids describe the types in arrangements of linear hyperplanes. Ardila and Develin proved that tropical oriented matroids can be represented as mixed subdivisions of dilated simplices. In this paper we show that this correspondence is a bijection. Moreover, a tropical analogue for the Topol…
We generalize the Varchenko matrix of a hyperplane arrangement to oriented matroids. We show that the celebrated determinant formula for the Varchenko matrix, first proved by Varchenko, generalizes to oriented matroids. It follows that the determinant only depends on the matroid underlying the oriented matroid and analogous formulas hold for cones in oriented matroids. We follow a proof strategy for the original Varchenko formula first suggested by Denham and Hanlon. Besides several technical lemmas this strategy also requires a topological result on supertopes which is of independent interest…
Zaslavsky conjectures that the bounded complex of a simple hyperplane arrangement is homeomorphic to a ball. We prove this conjecture for the more general uniform affine oriented matroids.
Richter-Gebert proved that every non-Euclidean uniform oriented matroid admits a biquadratic final polynomial. We extend this result to the non-uniform case.
The extension space conjecture of oriented matroid theory states that the space of all one-element, non-loop, non-coloop extensions of a realizable oriented matroid of rank $d$ has the homotopy type of a sphere of dimension $d-1$. We disprove this conjecture by showing the existence of a realizable uniform oriented matroid of high rank and corank 3 with disconnected extension space.
Symmetries of geometric structures such as hyperplane arrangements, point configurations and polytopes have been studied extensively for a long time. However, symmetries of oriented matroids, a common combinatorial abstraction of them, are not understood well. In this paper, we aim to obtain a better understanding of symmetries of oriented matroids. First, we put focus on symmetries of matroids, and give a general construction that generates a $3$-dimensional point configuration with a matroidal symmetry that cannot be realized as a geometric symmetry. The construction is based on the observat…
A phased matroid is a matroid with additional structure which plays the same role for complex vector arrangements that oriented matroids play for real vector arrangements. The realization space of an oriented (resp., phased) matroid is the space of vector arrangements in $\mathbb R^n$ (resp., $\mathbb C^n$) that correspond to oriented (resp., phased) matroid, modulo a change of coordinates. According to Mnëv's Universality Theorem, the realization spaces of uniform oriented matroids with rank greater than or equal to $3$ can be as complicated as any open semi-algebraic variety. In contrast, un…
We present an algorithm which takes a graph as input and decides in cubic time if the graph is the cocircuit graph of a uniform oriented matroid. In the affirmative case the algorithm returns the set of signed cocircuits of the oriented matroid. This improves an algorithm proposed by Babson, Finschi and Fukuda. Moreover we strengthen a result of Montellano-Ballesteros and Strausz about crabbed connectivity of cocircuit graphs of uniform oriented matroids.
Oriented matroids can serve as a tool of modeling of collective decision-making processes in contradictory problems of pattern recognition. We present a generalization of the committee techniques of pattern recognition to oriented matroids. A tope committee for an oriented matroid is a subset of its maximal covectors such that every positive halfspace contains more than half of the maximal covectors from this subset. For a large subfamily of oriented matroids their committee structure is quite rich; for example, any maximal chains in their tope posets provide one with information sufficient to…
We prove da Silva's 1987 conjecture that any positively oriented matroid is a positroid; that is, it can be realized by a set of vectors in a real vector space. It follows from this result and a result of the third author that the positive matroid Grassmannian (or positive MacPhersonian) is homeomorphic to a closed ball.
The components of K*-vectors associated to a simple oriented matroid M are the numbers of general or special tope committees for M. Using the principle of inclusion-exclusion, we determine how the reorientations of M on one-element subsets of its ground set affect K*-vectors.
The principle of inclusion-exclusion is applied to subsets of maximal covectors contained in halfspaces of a simple oriented matroid and to convex subsets of its ground set for enumerating tope committees.
We introduce the concept of orientation for Lagrangian matroids represented in the flag variety of maximal isotropic subspaces of dimension N in the real vector space of dimension 2N+1. The paper continues the study started in math.CO/0209100.
Represented Coxeter matroids of types $C_n$ and $D_n$, that is, symplectic and orthogonal matroids arising from totally isotropic subspaces of symplectic or (even-dimensional) orthogonal spaces, may also be represented in buildings of type $C_n$ and $D_n$, respectively. Indeed, the particular buildings involved are those arising from the flags or oriflammes, respectively, of totally isotropic subspaces. There are also buildings of type $B_n$ arising from flags of totally isotropic subspaces in odd-dimensional orthogonal space. Coxeter matroids of type $B_n$ are the same as those of type $C_n$ …
The construction of the Varchenko matrix for hyperplane arrangements, first introduced by Alexandre Varchenko, extends naturally to oriented matroids. In this paper, we generalize the theorem of Gao and Zhang by proving that the Varchenko matrix of an oriented matroid has a diagonal form if and only if the pseudohyperplane arrangement corresponding to the oriented matroid is in semigeneral position, i.e. it does not contain a degeneracy. Furthermore, we show that the Varchenko matrix of a pseudoline arrangement has a block diagonal form. This also provides an alternative combinatorial proof fo…
In 1993, Csima and Sawyer proved that in a non-pencil arrangement of n pseudolines, there are at least $\frac{6}{13}n$ simple points of intersection. Since pseudoline arrangements are the topological representations of reorientation classes of oriented matroids of rank $3$, in this paper, we will use this result to prove by induction that an oriented paving matroid of rank $r \ge 3$ on $n$ elements, where $n \geq 5+ r$, has at least $\frac{12}{13(r-1)} \binom{n}{r-2}$ independent hyperplanes, yielding a new necessary condition for a paving matroid to be orientable.
We present statistics on the decompositions (with respect to a distinguished symmetric 2t-cycle) of vertices of the hypercube graph, whose negative parts are covered by two subsets of the ground set {1,...,t} of the corresponding oriented matroid.
In an unpublished manuscript of 1992, Johan Karlander has given an axiomatization of affine oriented matroids. A closer examination of the text revealed an invalid construction and an incorrect argument in the proof of his main theorem. This paper provides an alternative argument to fix and slightly simplify the proof of the main theorem.
The active bijection for oriented matroids (and real hyperplane arrangements, and graphs, as particular cases) is introduced and investigated by the authors in a series of papers. Given any oriented matroid defined on a linearly ordered ground set, we exhibit one particularité of its bases, which we call its active basis, with remarkable properties. It preserves activities (for oriented matroids in the sense of Las Vergnas, for matroid bases in the sense of Tutte), as well as some active partitions of the ground set associated with oriented matroids and matroid bases. It yields a canonical bij…
The Las Vergnas' strong map conjecture, states that any strong map of oriented matroids $f:\mathcal{M}_1\rightarrow\mathcal{M}_2$ can be factored into extensions and contractions. The conjecture is known to be false due to a construction by Richter-Gebert, he find a non-factorizable strong map $f:\mathcal{M}_1\rightarrow\mathcal{M}_2$, however in his example $\mathcal{M}_1$ is not realizable. The problem that whether there exists a non-factorizable strong map between realizable oriented matroids still remains open. In this paper we provide a counterexample to the strong map conjecture on reali…
For a symmetric 2t-cycle in the tope graph of a simple oriented matroid M on the ground set {1,...,t}, where t is even, we describe decompositions of topes and subtopes of M with respect to the subtopes corresponding to the edges of the symmetric cycle.
We introduce the active partition of the ground set of an oriented matroid perspective (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 …
Las Vergnas and Hamidoune studied the number of circuits needed to determine an oriented matroid. In this paper we investigate this problem and some new variants, as well as their interpretation in particular classes of matroids. We present general upper and lower bounds in the setting of general connected orientable matroids, leading to the study of subgraphs of the base graph and the intersection graph of circuits. We then consider the problem for uniform matroids which is closely related to the notion of (connected) covering numbers in Design Theory. Finally, we also devote special attentio…
We present statistics on the decompositions (with respect to a distinguished symmetric 2t-cycle) of vertices of the hypercube graph, whose negative parts are regarded as disjoint unions of two subsets of the ground set {1,...,t} of the corresponding oriented matroid.
Neighborly polytopes are those that maximize the number of faces in each dimension among all polytopes with the same number of vertices. Despite their extremal properties they form a surprisingly rich class of polytopes, which has been widely studied and is the subject of many open problems and conjectures. In this paper, we study the enumeration of neighborly polytopes beyond the cases that have been computed so far. To this end, we enumerate neighborly oriented matroids --- a combinatorial abstraction of neighborly polytopes --- of small rank and corank. In particular, if we denote by OM($r,…
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".
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 first author introduced the circuit-cocircuit reversal system of an oriented matroid, and showed that when the underlying matroid is regular, the cardinalities of such system and its variations are equal to special evaluations of the Tutte polynomial (e.g., the total number of circuit-cocircuit reversal classes equals $t(M;1,1)$, the number of bases of the matroid). By relating these classes to activity classes studied by the first author and Las Vergnas, we give an alternative proof of the above results and a proof of the converse statements that these equalities fail whenever the underly…
We study the positive Bergman complex B+(M) of an oriented matroid M, which is a certain subcomplex of the Bergman complex B(M) of the underlying unoriented matroid. The positive Bergman complex is defined so that given a linear ideal I with associated oriented matroid M_I, the positive tropical variety associated to I is equal to the fan over B+(M_I). Our main result is that a certain "fine" subdivision of B+(M) is a geometric realization of the order complex of the proper part of the Las Vergnas face lattice of M. It follows that B+(M) is homeomorphic to a sphere. For the oriented matroid of…
If V(R) is the vertex set of a symmetric cycle R in the tope graph of a simple oriented matroid M, then for any tope T of M there exists a unique inclusion-minimal subset Q(T,R) of V(R) such that T is the sum of the topes of Q(T,R). If for decompositions Q(T',R') and Q(T",R") with respect to symmetric cycles R' and R" in the tope graphs of two simple oriented matroids, whose ground sets have the cardinalities of opposite parity, we have |Q(T',R')|>3 and |Q(T",R")|>3, then these decompositions satisfy a certain orthogonality relation.
The Holt-Klee theorem says that the graph of a $d$-polytope, with edges oriented by a linear function on $P$ that is not constant on any edge, admits $d$ independent monotone paths from the source to the sink. We prove that the digraphs obtained from oriented matroid programs of rank $d+1$ on $n+2$ elements, which include those from $d$-polytopes with $n$ facets, admit $d$ independent monotone paths from source to sink if $d \le 4$. This was previously only known to hold for $d\le 3$ and $n\le 6$.
Varchenko introduced in 1993 a distance function on the chambers of a hyperplane arrangement that gave rise to a determinant whose entry in position $(C, D)$ is the distance between the chambers $C$ and $D$, and computed that determinant. In 2017, Aguiar and Mahajan provided a generalization of that distance function, and computed the corresponding determinant. This article extends their distance function to the topes of an oriented matroid, and computes the determinant thus defined. Oriented matroids have the nice property to be abstractions of some mathematical structures including hyperplan…
The Lagrangian geometry of matroids was introduced in [ADH20] through the construction of the conormal fan of a matroid M. We used the conormal fan to give a Lagrangian-geometric interpretation of the h-vector of the broken circuit complex of M: its entries are the degrees of the mixed intersections of certain convex piecewise linear functions $γ$ and $δ$ on the conormal fan of M. By showing that the conormal fan satisfies the Hodge-Riemann relations, we proved Brylawski's conjecture that this h-vector is a log-concave sequence. This sequel explores the Lagrangian combinatorics of matroids, fu…
If V(R) is the vertex set of a symmetric cycle R in the tope graph of a simple oriented matroid M, then for any tope T of M there exists a unique inclusion-minimal subset Q(T;R) of V(R) such that T is the sum of the topes of Q(T;R). If |Q(T;R)|>3, then the decomposition Q(T;R) of the tope T with respect to the symmetric cycle R satisfies certain Dehn-Sommerville type relations.
We give a cohomological interpretation of the Heaviside filtration on the Varchenko--Gelfand ring of a pair $(\mathcal{A},\mathcal{K})$, where $\mathcal{A}$ is a real hyperplane arrangement and $\mathcal{K}$ is a convex open subset of the ambient vector space. This builds on work of the first author, who studied the filtration from a purely algebraic perspective, as well as work of Moseley, who gave a cohomological interpretation in the special case where $\mathcal{K}$ is the ambient vector space. We also define the Gelfand--Rybnikov ring of a conditional oriented matroid, which simultaneously…
Let the sign components of the maximal covectors of a simple oriented matroid M be represented by the real numbers -1 and 1. Consider the vertex set V(R) of a symmetric cycle R of adjacent topes in the tope graph of M as a subposet of the tope poset of M. If B is the bottom element of the tope poset then B is equal to the unweighted sum of the members of the set min V(R) of minimal elements of the subposet V(R); if B is the positive tope then the set min V(R) is a critical tope committee for the acyclic oriented matroid M.
