Las Vergnas introduced several lattice structures on the bases of an ordered matroid M by using their external and internal activities. He also noted that when computing the Moebius function of these lattices, it was often zero, although he had no explanation for that fact. The purpose of this paper is to provide a topological reason for this phenomenon. In particular, we show that the order complex of the external lattice L of M is homotopic to the independence complex of the restriction M^*|T where M^* is the dual of M and T is the top element of L. We then compute some examples showing that this latter complex is often contractible which forces all its homology groups, and thus its Moebius function, to vanish. A theorem of Björner also helps us to calculate the homology of the matroid complex.
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…
We introduce and study filtrations of a matroid on a linearly ordered ground set, which are particular sequences of nested sets. A given basis can be decomposed into a uniquely defined sequence of bases of minors, such that these bases have an internal/external activity equal to 1/0 or 0/1 (in the sense of Tutte polynomial activities). This decomposition, which we call the active filtration/partition of the basis, refines the known partition of the ground set into internal and external elements with respect to a given basis. It can be built by a certain closure operator, which we call the acti…
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 …
Short rewriting, and geometric explanations related to the active bijection, for: Extension-lifting bijections for oriented matroids, by S. Backman, F. Santos, C.H. Yuen, arXiv:1904.03562v2 (October 29, 2023)
In 1980, Las Vergnas defined a notion of discrete convexity for oriented matroids, which Edelman subsequently related to the theory of anti-exchange closure functions and convex geometries. In this paper, we use generalized matroid activity to construct a convex geometry associated with an ordered, unoriented matroid. The construction in particular yields a new type of representability for an ordered matroid defined by the affine representability of its corresponding convex geometry. The lattice of convex sets of this convex geometry induces an ordering on the matroid independent sets which ex…
$q$-Matroids are defined on complemented modular support lattices. Minors of length 2 are of four types as in a "classical" matroid. Tutte polynomials $τ(x,y)$ of matroids are calculated either by recursion over deletion/contraction of single elements, by an enumeration of bases with respect to internal/external activities, or by substitution $x \to (x-1),\; y \to (y-1)$ in their rank generating functions $ρ(x,y)$. The $q$-analogue of the passage from a Tutte polynomial to its corresponding RGF is straight-forward, but the analogue of the reverse process $x \to (x-1),\; y \to (y-1)$ is more de…
We introduce delta-graphic matroids, which are matroids whose bases form graphic delta-matroids. The class of delta-graphic matroids contains graphic matroids as well as cographic matroids and is a proper subclass of the class of regular matroids. We give a structural characterization of the class of delta-graphic matroids. We also show that every forbidden minor for the class of delta-graphic matroids has at most $48$ elements.
The weak-map order on the matroid base polytopes is the partial order defined by inclusion. Lucas proved that the base polytope of no binary matroid includes the base polytope of a connected matroid. A matroid base polytope is said to be decomposable when it has a polytopal decomposition which consists of at least two matroid base polytopes. We shed light on the relation between the decomposability and the weak-map order of matroid base polytopes. We classify matroids into five types with respect to the weak-map order and decomposability. We give an example of a matroid in each class. Moreover…
As part of the recent developments in infinite matroid theory, there have been a number of conjectures about how standard theorems of finite matroid theory might extend to the infinite setting. These include base packing, base covering, and matroid intersection and union. We show that several of these conjectures are equivalent, so that each gives a perspective on the same central problem of infinite matroid theory. For finite matroids, these equivalences give new and simpler proofs for the finite theorems corresponding to these conjectures. This new point of view also allows us to extend, and…
In this paper, we study flag structures of matroid base polytopes. We describe faces of matroid base polytopes in terms of matroid data, and give conditions for hyperplane splits of matroid base polytopes. Also, we show how the cd-index of a polytope can be expressed when a polytope is split by a hyperplane, and apply these to the cd-index of a matroid base polytope of a rank 2 matroid.
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 facial structures of matroid base polytopes corresponding to lattice path matroids.
In this paper, we define generalized splitting and element splitting operations on $p$-matroids. $p$-matroids are the matroids representable over $GF(p).$ The circuits and the bases of the new matroid are characterized in terms of circuits and bases of the original matroid, respectively. A class of $n$-connected $p$-matroids which gives n-connected $p$- matroids using the generalized splitting operation is also characterized. We also prove that connectivity of $p$-matroid is preserved under element splitting operation. Sufficient conditions to obtain Eulerian $p$-matroid from Eulerian $p$-matr…
The $es$-splitting operation on binary bridge-less matroids never produces an Eulerian matroid. But for matroids representable over $GF(p),(p>2),$ called $p$-matroids, the $es$-splitting operation may yield Eulerian matroids. In this work, we introduce the $es$-splitting operation for $p$-matroids and characterize a class of $p$-matroids yielding Eulerian matroids after the $es$-splitting operation. Characterization of circuits, and bases of the resulting matroid, after the $es$-splitting operation, in terms of circuits, and bases of the original matroid, respectively, are discussed. We also p…
We present a new algorithm for computing the volume of an arbitrary matroid base polytope. We provide two applications of this approach: a relation between the volume of the base polytope of a matroid $\M$ and its relaxation $\M'$, and a formula for the volume of an arbitrary sparse paving matroid base polytope.
For a matroid $M$ of rank $r$ on $n$ elements, let $b(M)$ denote the fraction of bases of $M$ among the subsets of the ground set with cardinality $r$. We show that $$Ω(1/n)\leq 1-b(M)\leq O(\log(n)^3/n)\text{ as }n\rightarrow \infty$$ for asymptotically almost all matroids $M$ on $n$ elements. We derive that asymptotically almost all matroids on $n$ elements (1) have a $U_{k,2k}$-minor, whenever $k\leq O(\log(n))$, (2) have girth $\geq Ω(\log(n))$, (3) have Tutte connectivity $\geq Ω(\sqrt{\log(n)})$, and (4) do not arise as the truncation of another matroid. Our argument is based on a refine…
We introduce the matroid-minor coalgebra C, which has labeled matroids as distinguished basis, and coproduct given by splitting a matroid into a submatroid and complementary contraction all possible ways. We introduce two new bases for C; the first of these is is related to the distinguished basis by Mobius inversion over the rank-preserving weak order on matroids, the second by Mobius inversion over the suborder excluding matroids that are irreducible with respect to the free product operation. We show that the subset of each of these bases corresponding to the set of irreducible matroids is …
Introduced by Ardila (J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, 2003), the Catalan matroid is obtained by defining the bases of the matroid using Dyck paths from $(0,0)$ to $(n,n)$. Further research has gone into the topic, with variants like lattice path matroids (introduced by Bonin, de Mier, and Noy (J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, 2003)) and shifted matroids (introduced independently by Klivans (2003), and Ardila) being studied intensively. In this short note, we introduce the Young matroid, an extension of the Catalan matroid, where the bases are defined using the standard Young tableaux of a fixed shape. This…
We study some properties of a serial (i.e. one-by-one) symmetric exchange of elements of two disjoint bases of a matroid. We show that any two elements of one base have a serial symmetric exchange with some two elements of the other base. As a result, we obtain that any two disjoint bases in a matroid of rank 4 have a full serial symmetric exchange.
We consider the class of graphs for which the edge connectivity is equal to the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees, and the natural generalization to matroids, where the cogirth is equal to the number of disjoint bases. We provide descriptions of such graphs and matroids, showing that such a graph (or matroid) has a unique decomposition. In the case of graphs, our results are relevant for certain communication protocols.
This is a continuation of the early paper concerning matroid base polytope decomposition. Here, we will present sufficient conditions on $M$ so its base matroid polytope $P(M)$ has a {\em sequence} of hyperplane splits. The latter yields to decompositions of $P(M)$ with two or more pieces for infinitely many matroids $M$. We also present necessary conditions on the Euclidean representation of rank three matroids $M$ for the existences of decompositions of $P(M)$ into $2$ or $3$ pieces. Finally, we prove that $P(M_1 \oplus M_2)$ has a sequence of hyperplane splits if either $P(M_1)$ or $P(M_2)$…
A new isomorphism invariant of matroids is introduced, in the form of a quasisymmetric function. This invariant (1) defines a Hopf morphism from the Hopf algebra of matroids to the quasisymmetric functions, which is surjective if one uses rational coefficients, (2) is a multivariate generating function for integer weight vectors that give minimum total weight to a unique base of the matroid, (3) is equivalent, via the Hopf antipode, to a generating function for integer weight vectors which keeps track of how many bases minimize the total weight, (4) behaves simply under matroid duality, (5) ha…
Rota's basis conjecture (RBC) states that given a collection B of n bases in a matroid M of rank n, one can always find n disjoint rainbow bases with respect to B. We show that if M is a matroid having n + k elements, then one can construct n - k^3 disjoint rainbow bases, where b is a constant depending only on k.
Let $P(M)$ be the matroid base polytope of a matroid $M$. A {\em matroid base polytope decomposition} of $P(M)$ is a decomposition of the form $P(M) = \bigcup\limits_{i=1}^t P(M_{i})$ where each $P(M_i)$ is also a matroid base polytope for some matroid $M_i$, and for each $1\le i \neq j\le t$, the intersection $P(M_{i}) \cap P(M_{j})$ is a face of both $P(M_i)$ and $P(M_j)$. In this paper, we investigate {\em hyperplane splits}, that is, polytope decompositions when $t=2$. We give sufficient conditions for $M$ so $P(M)$ has a hyperplane split and characterize when $P(M_1 \oplus M_2)$ has a hyp…
We prove that the ranks of the subsets and the activities of the bases of a matroid define valuations for the subdivisions of a matroid polytope into smaller matroid polytopes.
We prove a new exchange property for bases of a matroid that generalizes the multiple symmetric exchange property. For every bases $B_1,\dots,B_k$ of a matroid and a subset $A_1\subset B_1$ there exist subsets $A_2\subset B_2,\dots,A_k\subset B_k$ such that all sets $(B_i\setminus A_i)\cup A_{i-1}$ achieved by a cyclic shift of $A_i$'s by one are bases.
The way circuits, relative to a basis, are affected as a result of exchanging a basis element, is studied. As consequences, it is shown that three consecutive symmetric exchanges exist for any two bases of a matroid, and that a full serial symmetric exchange, of length at most 6, exists for any two bases of a matroid of rank 5. A new characterization of binary matroids, related to basis-exchange, is presented.
The property of balance (in the sense of Feder and Mihail) is investigated in the context of paving matroids. The following examples are exhibited: (a) a class of ``sparse'' paving matroids that are balanced, but at the same time rich enough combinatorially to permit the encoding of hard counting problems; and (b) a paving matroid that is not balanced. The computational significance of (a) is the following. As a consequence of balance, there is an efficient algorithm for approximating the number of bases of a sparse paving matroid within specified relative error. On the other hand, determining…
The multiple exchange property for matroid bases is generalized for valuated matroids and M$^\natural$-concave set functions. The proof is based on the Fenchel-type duality theorem in discrete convex analysis. The present result has an implication in economics: The strong no complementarities (SNC) condition of Gul and Stacchetti is in fact equivalent to the gross substitutes (GS) condition of Kelso and Crawford.
A coloring of a matroid is an assignment of colors to the elements of its ground set. We restrict to proper colorings - those for which elements of the same color form an independent set. Seymour proved that a $k$-colorable matroid is also colorable from any lists of size $k$. We generalize this theorem to the case when lists have still fixed sizes, but not necessarily equal. For any fixed size of lists assignment $\ell$, we prove that, if a matroid is colorable from a particular lists of size $\ell$, then it is colorable from any lists of size $\ell$. This gives an explicit necessary and suff…
Stanley has conjectured that the h-vector of a matroid complex is a pure O-sequence. We will prove this for cotransversal matroids by using generalized permutohedra. We construct a bijection between lattice points inside a r-dimensional convex polytope and bases of a rank r transversal matroid.
We first give two new proofs of an old result that the reduced Euler characteristic of a matroid complex is equal to the Möbius number of the lattice of cycles of the matroid up to the sign. The purpose has been to find a model to establish an analogous result for the case of $q$-matroids and we find a relation between the Euler characteristic of the simplicial chain complex associated to a $q$-matroid complex and the lattice of $q$-cycles of the $q$-matroid. We use this formula to find the complete homology over $\mathbb{Z}$ of this shellable simplicial complex. We give a characterization of …
The family of 2-level matroids, that is, matroids whose base polytope is 2-level, has been recently studied and characterized by means of combinatorial properties. 2-level matroids generalize series-parallel graphs, which have been already successfully analyzed from the enumerative perspective. We bring to light some structural properties of 2-level matroids and exploit them for enumerative purposes. Moreover, the counting results are used to show that the number of combinatorially non-equivalent (n-1)-dimensional 2-level polytopes is bounded from below by $c \cdot n^{-5/2} \cdot ρ^{-n}$, wher…
Fix two lattice paths $P$ and $Q$ from $(0,0)$ to $(m,r)$ that use East and North steps with $P $ never going above $Q$. Bonin et al. show that the lattice paths that go from $(0,0)$ to $(m,r)$ and remain bounded by $P$ and $Q$ can be identified with the bases of a particular type of transversal matroid, which we call it a lattice path matroid. In this paper, we consider properties of lattice path matroid polytopes. These are the polytopes associated to the lattice path matroids. We investigate their face structure, decomposition, triangulation, Ehrhart polynomial and volume.
The expansion axiom of matroids requires only the existence of some kind of independent sets, not the uniqueness of them. This causes that the base families of some matroids can be reduced while the unions of the base families of these matroids remain unchanged. In this paper, we define unique expansion matroids in which the expansion axiom has some extent uniqueness; we define union minimal matroids in which the base families have some extent minimality. Some properties of them and the relationship between them are studied. First, we propose the concepts of secondary base and forming base fam…
We investigate an approach to matroid complexity that involves describing a matroid via a list of independent sets, bases, circuits, or some other family of subsets of the ground set. The computational complexity of algorithmic problems under this scheme appears to be highly dependent on the choice of input-type. We define an order on the various methods of description, and we show how this order acts upon ten types of input. We also show that under this approach several natural algorithmic problems for matroids are complete in classes thought not to be equal to P.
A new Z-basis for the space of quasisymmetric functions (QSym, for short) is presented. It is shown to have nonnegative structure constants, and several interesting properties relative to the space of quasisymmetric functions associated to matroids by the Hopf algebra morphism (F) of Billera, Jia, and Reiner. In particular, for loopless matroids, this basis reflects the grading by matroid rank, as well as by the size of the ground set. It is shown that the morphism F is injective on the set of rank two matroids, and that decomposability of the quasisymmetric function of a rank two matroid mirr…
Let b(M) denote the maximal number of disjoint bases in a matroid M. It is shown that if M is a matroid of rank d+1, then for any continuous map f from the matroidal complex M into the d-dimensional Euclidean space there exist t \geq \sqrt{b(M)}/4 disjoint independent sets σ_1,\ldots,σ_t \in M such that \bigcap_{i=1}^t f(σ_i) \neq \emptyset.
In 1980, White conjectured that the toric ideal of a matroid is generated by quadratic binomials corresponding to a symmetric exchange. In this paper, we compute Gröbner bases of toric ideals associated with matroids and show that, for every matroid on ground sets of size at most seven except for two matroids, Gröbner bases of toric ideals consist of quadratic binomials corresponding to a symmetric exchange.
We give a fully polynomial-time randomised approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the number of bases in a bicircular matroids. This is a natural class of matroids for which counting bases exactly is #P-hard and yet approximate counting can be done efficiently.
We investigate the complexity of counting trees, forests and bases of matroids from a parameterized point of view. It turns out that the problems of computing the number of trees and forests with $k$ edges are $\# W[1]$-hard when parameterized by $k$. Together with the recent algorithm for deterministic matrix truncation by Lokshtanov et al. (ICALP 2015), the hardness result for $k$-forests implies $\# W[1]$-hardness of the problem of counting bases of a matroid when parameterized by rank or nullity, even if the matroid is restricted to be representable over a field of characteristic $2$. We c…
For a matroid with an ordered (or "labelled") basis, a basis exchange step removes one element with label $l$ and replaces it by a new element that results in a new basis, and with the new element assigned label $l$. We prove that one labelled basis can be reconfigured to another if and only if for every label, the initial and final elements with that label lie in the same connected component of the matroid. Furthermore, we prove that when the reconfiguration is possible, the number of basis exchange steps required is $O(r^{1.5})$ for a rank $r$ matroid. For a graphic matroid we improve the bo…
The basis exchange axiom has been a driving force in the development of matroid theory. However, the axiom gives only a local characterization of the relation of bases, which is a major stumbling block to further progress, and providing a global understanding of the structure of matroid bases is a fundamental goal in matroid optimization. While studying the structure of symmetric exchanges, Gabow proposed the problem that any pair of bases admits a sequence of symmetric exchanges. A different extension of the exchange axiom was proposed by White, who investigated the equivalence of compatible …
One of the most intriguing unsolved questions of matroid optimization is the characterization of the existence of $k$ 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, such as Woodall's conjecture on packing disjoint dijoins in a directed graph, or Rota's beautiful conjecture on rearrangements of bases. In the present paper we prove that the problem is difficult under the rank oracle model, i.e., we show that there is no algorithm which decides if the common ground set of two matro…
