Excluded minors for the class of split matroids

The class of split matroids arises by putting conditions on the system of split hyperplanes of the matroid base polytope. It can alternatively be defined in terms of structural properties of the matroid. We use this structural description to give an excluded minor characterisation of the class

Matroids with nine elements

We describe the computation of a catalogue containing all matroids with up to nine elements, and present some fundamental data arising from this cataogue. Our computation confirms and extends the results obtained in the 1960s by Blackburn, Crapo and Higgs. The matroids and associated data are stored in an online database, and we give three short examples of the use of this database.Comment: 22 page

Excluding Kuratowski graphs and their duals from binary matroids

We consider some applications of our characterisation of the internally 4-connected binary matroids with no M(K3,3)-minor. We characterise the internally 4-connected binary matroids with no minor in some subset of {M(K3,3),M*(K3,3),M(K5),M*(K5)} that contains either M(K3,3) or M*(K3,3). We also describe a practical algorithm for testing whether a binary matroid has a minor in the subset. In addition we characterise the growth-rate of binary matroids with no M(K3,3)-minor, and we show that a binary matroid with no M(K3,3)-minor has critical exponent over GF(2) at most equal to four.Comment: Some small change

Structure of Cubic Lehman Matrices

A pair $(A,B)$ of square $(0,1)$-matrices is called a \emph{Lehman pair} if $AB^T=J+kI$ for some integer $k\in\{-1,1,2,3,\ldots\}$. In this case $A$ and $B$ are called \emph{Lehman matrices}. This terminology arises because Lehman showed that the rows with the fewest ones in any non-degenerate minimally nonideal (mni) matrix $M$ form a square Lehman submatrix of $M$. Lehman matrices with $k=-1$ are essentially equivalent to \emph{partitionable graphs} (also known as $(\alpha,\omega)$-graphs), so have been heavily studied as part of attempts to directly classify minimal imperfect graphs. In this paper, we view a Lehman matrix as the bipartite adjacency matrix of a regular bipartite graph, focusing in particular on the case where the graph is cubic. From this perspective, we identify two constructions that generate cubic Lehman graphs from smaller Lehman graphs. The most prolific of these constructions involves repeatedly replacing suitable pairs of edges with a particular $6$-vertex subgraph that we call a $3$-rung ladder segment. Two decades ago, L\"{u}tolf \& Margot initiated a computational study of mni matrices and constructed a catalogue containing (among other things) a listing of all cubic Lehman matrices with $k =1$ of order up to $17 \times 17$. We verify their catalogue (which has just one omission), and extend the computational results to $20 \times 20$ matrices. Of the $908$ cubic Lehman matrices (with $k=1$) of order up to $20 \times 20$, only two do not arise from our $3$-rung ladder construction. However these exceptions can be derived from our second construction, and so our two constructions cover all known cubic Lehman matrices with $k=1$

Towards a splitter theorem for internally 4-connected binary matroids VIII: small matroids

Our splitter theorem for internally 4-connected binary matroids studies pairs of the form (M,N), where N and M are internally 4-connected binary matroids, M has a proper N-minor, and if M' is an internally 4-connected matroid such that M has a proper M'-minor and M' has an N-minor, then |E(M)|-|E(M')|>3. The analysis in the splitter theorem requires the constraint that |E(M)|>15. In this article, we complement that analysis by using an exhaustive computer search to find all such pairs satisfying |E(M)|<16.Comment: Correcting minor error

On the number of sparse paving matroids

AbstractLet sp(n) be the number of sparse paving matroids on the ground set {1,…,n}. We prove that loglogsp(n)=n−(3/2)logn+O(loglogn), and we conjecture that the same equality applies to the number of all matroids on the set {1,…,n}