Digital Commons Network^™

Characterizations Of Certain Classes Of Graphs And Matroids, Jagdeep Singh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

``If a theorem about graphs can be expressed in terms of edges and cycles only, it probably exemplifies a more general theorem about matroids." Most of my work draws inspiration from this assertion, made by Tutte in 1979.

In 2004, Ehrenfeucht, Harju and Rozenberg proved that all graphs can be constructed from complete graphs via a sequence of the operations of complementation, switching edges and non-edges at a vertex, and local complementation. In Chapter 2, we consider the binary matroid analogue of each of these graph operations. We prove that the analogue of the result of Ehrenfeucht et. al. does …

Connectivity Of Matroids And Polymatroids, Zachary R. Gershkoff

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of work on matroid and polymatroid connectivity. Connectivity is a useful property of matroids that allows a matroid to be decomposed naturally into its connected components, which are like blocks in a graph. The Cunningham-Edmonds tree decomposition further gives a way to decompose matroids into 3-connected minors. Much of the research below concerns alternate senses in which matroids and polymatroids can be connected. After a brief introduction to matroid theory in Chapter 1, the main results of this dissertation are given in Chapters 2 and 3. Tutte proved that, for an element e of a …

The Graphs And Matroids Whose Only Odd Circuits Are Small, Kristen Nicole Wetzler

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis is motivated by a graph-theoretical result of Maffray, which states that a 2-connected graph with no odd cycles exceeding length 3 is bipartite, is isomorphic to K_4, or is a collection of triangles glued together along a common edge. We first prove that a connected simple binary matroid M has no odd circuits other than triangles if and only if M is affine, M is M(K_4) or F_7, or M is the cycle matroid of a graph consisting of a collection of triangles glued together along a common edge. This result implies that a 2-connected loopless graph G …

On Properties Of Matroid Connectivity, Simon Pfeil

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Highly connected matroids are consistently useful in the analysis of matroid structure. Round matroids, in particular, were instrumental in the proof of Rota's conjecture. Chapter 2 concerns a class of matroids with similar properties to those of round matroids. We provide many useful characterizations of these matroids, and determine explicitly their regular members. Tutte proved that a 3-connected matroid with every element in a 3-element circuit and a 3-element cocircuit is either a whirl or the cycle matroid of a wheel. This result led to the proof of the 3-connected splitter theorem. More recently, Miller proved that matroids of sufficient …

Selected Problems On Matroid Minors, Jesse Taylor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation begins with an introduction to matroids and graphs. In the first chapter, we develop matroid and graph theory definitions and preliminary results sufficient to discuss the problems presented in the later chapters. These topics include duality, connectivity, matroid minors, and Cunningham and Edmonds's tree decomposition for connected matroids. One of the most well-known excluded-minor results in matroid theory is Tutte's characterization of binary matroids. The class of binary matroids is one of the most widely studied classes of matroids, and its members have many attractive qualities. This motivates the study of matroid classes that are close to being …

On Matroid And Polymatroid Connectivity, Dennis Wayne Hall Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Matroids were introduced in 1935 by Hassler Whitney to provide a way to abstractly capture the dependence properties common to graphs and matrices. One important class of matroids arises by taking as objects some finite collection of one-dimensional subspaces of a vector space. If, instead, one takes as objects some finite collection of subspaces of dimensions at most k in a vector space, one gets an example of a k-polymatroid.

Connectivity is a pivotal topic of study in the endeavor to understand the structure of matroids and polymatroids. In this dissertation, we study the notion of connectivity from several …