Totally free expansions of matroids

The aim of this paper is to give insight into the behaviour of inequivalent representations of 3-connected matroids. An element x of a matroid M is fixed if there is no extension M′ of M by an element x′ such that {x, x′} is independent and M′ is unaltered by swapping the labels on x and x′. When x is fixed, a representation of M.\x extends in at most one way to a representation of M. A 3-connected matroid N is totally free if neither N nor its dual has a fixed element whose deletion is a series extension of a 3-connected matroid. The significance of such matroids derives from the theorem, established here, that the number of inequivalent representations of a 3-connected matroid M over a finite field F is bounded above by the maximum, over all totally free minors N of M, of the number of inequivalent F-representations of N. It is proved that, within a class of matroids that is closed under minors and duality, the totally free matroids can be found by an inductive search. Such a search is employed to show that, for all r ≥ 4, there are unique and easily described rank-r quaternary and quinternary matroids, the first being the free spike. Finally, Seymour\u27s Splitter Theorem is extended by showing that the sequence of 3-connected matroids from a matroid M to a minor N, whose existence is guaranteed by the theorem, may be chosen so that all deletions and contractions of fixed and cofixed elements occur in the initial segment of the sequence. © 2001 Elsevier Science

Confinement of matroid representations to subsets of partial fields

Let M be a matroid representable over a (partial) field P and B a matrix representable over a sub-partial field P' of P. We say that B confines M to P' if, whenever a P-representation matrix A of M has a submatrix B, A is a scaled P'-matrix. We show that, under some conditions on the partial fields, on M, and on B, verifying whether B confines M to P' amounts to a finite check. A corollary of this result is Whittle's Stabilizer Theorem. A combination of the Confinement Theorem and the Lift Theorem from arXiv:0804.3263 leads to a short proof of Whittle's characterization of the matroids representable over GF(3) and other fields. We also use a combination of the Confinement Theorem and the Lift Theorem to prove a characterization, in terms of representability over partial fields, of the 3-connected matroids that have k inequivalent representations over GF(5), for k = 1, ..., 6. Additionally we give, for a fixed matroid M, an algebraic construction of a partial field P_M and a representation A over P_M such that every representation of M over a partial field P is equal to f(A) for some homomorphism f:P_M->P. Using the Confinement Theorem we prove an algebraic analog of the theory of free expansions by Geelen et al.Comment: 45 page

Dimension, matroids, and dense pairs of first-order structures

A structure M is pregeometric if the algebraic closure is a pregeometry in all M' elementarily equivalent to M. We define a generalisation: structures with an existential matroid. The main examples are superstable groups of U-rank a power of omega and d-minimal expansion of fields. Ultraproducts of pregeometric structures expanding a field, while not pregeometric in general, do have an unique existential matroid. Generalising previous results by van den Dries, we define dense elementary pairs of structures expanding a field and with an existential matroid, and we show that the corresponding theories have natural completions, whose models also have a unique existential matroid. We extend the above result to dense tuples of structures.Comment: Version 2.8. 61 page

The Number of Nowhere-Zero Flows on Graphs and Signed Graphs

A nowhere-zero $k$-flow on a graph $\Gamma$ is a mapping from the edges of $\Gamma$ to the set \{\pm1, \pm2, ..., \pm(k-1)\} \subset \bbZ such that, in any fixed orientation of $\Gamma$, at each node the sum of the labels over the edges pointing towards the node equals the sum over the edges pointing away from the node. We show that the existence of an \emph{integral flow polynomial} that counts nowhere-zero $k$-flows on a graph, due to Kochol, is a consequence of a general theory of inside-out polytopes. The same holds for flows on signed graphs. We develop these theories, as well as the related counting theory of nowhere-zero flows on a signed graph with values in an abelian group of odd order. Our results are of two kinds: polynomiality or quasipolynomiality of the flow counting functions, and reciprocity laws that interpret the evaluations of the flow polynomials at negative integers in terms of the combinatorics of the graph.Comment: 17 pages, to appear in J. Combinatorial Th. Ser.

Confinement of matroid representations to subsets of partial fields

Let M be a matroid representable over a (partial) field P and B a matrix representable over a sub-partial field P' of P. We say that B confines M to P' if, whenever a P-representation matrix A of M has a submatrix B, A is a scaled P'-matrix. We show that, under some conditions on the partial fields, on M, and on B, verifying whether B confines M to P' amounts to a finite check. A corollary of this result is Whittle's Stabilizer Theorem. A combination of the Confinement Theorem and the Lift Theorem from arXiv:0804.3263 leads to a short proof of Whittle's characterization of the matroids representable over GF(3) and other fields. We also use a combination of the Confinement Theorem and the Lift Theorem to prove a characterization, in terms of representability over partial fields, of the 3-connected matroids that have k inequivalent representations over GF(5), for k = 1, ..., 6. Additionally we give, for a fixed matroid M, an algebraic construction of a partial field P_M and a representation A over P_M such that every representation of M over a partial field P is equal to f(A) for some homomorphism f:P_M->P. Using the Confinement Theorem we prove an algebraic analog of the theory of free expansions by Geelen et al

General duality for abelian-group-valued statistical-mechanics models

We introduce a general class of statistical-mechanics models, taking values in an abelian group, which includes examples of both spin and gauge models, both ordered and disordered. The model is described by a set of ``variables'' and a set of ``interactions''. A Gibbs factor is associated to each variable and to each interaction. We introduce a duality transformation for systems in this class. The duality exchanges the abelian group with its dual, the Gibbs factors with their Fourier transforms, and the interactions with the variables. High (low) couplings in the interaction terms are mapped into low (high) couplings in the one-body terms. The idea is that our class of systems extends the one for which the classical procedure 'a la Kramers and Wannier holds, up to include randomness into the pattern of interaction. We introduce and study some physical examples: a random Gaussian Model, a random Potts-like model, and a random variant of discrete scalar QED. We shortly describe the consequence of duality for each example.Comment: 26 pages, 2 Postscript figure