Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Exploring Flag Matroids And Duality, Zachary Garcia

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Matroids capture an abstraction of independence in mathematics, and in doing so, connect discrete mathematical structures that arise in a variety of contexts. A matroid can be defined in several cryptomorphic ways depending on which perspective of a matroid is most applicable to the given context. Among the many important concepts in matroid theory, the concept of matroid duality provides a powerful tool when addressing difficult problems. The usefulness of matroid duality stems from the fact that the dual of a matroid is itself a matroid. In this thesis, we explore a matroid-like object called a flag matroid. In particular, …