685 research outputs found
On circuits and serial symmetric basis-exchange in matroids
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
Rainbow sets in the intersection of two matroids
Given sets , a {\em partial rainbow function} is a partial
choice function of the sets . A {\em partial rainbow set} is the range of
a partial rainbow function. Aharoni and Berger \cite{AhBer} conjectured that if
and are matroids on the same ground set, and are
pairwise disjoint sets of size belonging to , then there exists a
rainbow set of size belonging to . Following an idea of
Woolbright and Brower-de Vries-Wieringa, we prove that there exists such a
rainbow set of size at least
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