On Properties of Matroid Connectivity

Abstract

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 size having every pair of elements in a 4-element circuit and a 4-element cocircuit are spikes. This observation simplifies the proof of Rota's conjecture for GF(4). In Chapters 3 and 4, we investigate matroids having similar restrictions on their small circuits and cocircuits. The main result of each of these chapters is a complete characterization of the matroids therein.