Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Exploring Matroid Minors, Jonathan Lara Tejeda

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Matroids are discrete mathematical objects that generalize important concepts of independence arising in other areas of mathematics. There are many different important classes of matroids and a frequent problem in matroid theory is to determine whether or not a given matroid belongs to a certain class of matroids. For special classes of matroids that are minor-closed, this question is commonly answered by determining a complete list of matroids that are not in the class but have the property that each of their proper minors is in the class; that is, minor-minimal matroids that are not in the minor-closed class. These …