Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics Commons^™

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 …