Bicircular Matroids Research Articles

Lattice Path Bicircular Matroids

Lattice path matroids and bicircular matroids are two well-known classes of transversal matroids. In the seminal work of Bonin and de Mier about structural properties of lattice path matroids, the authors claimed that lattice path matroids significantly differ from bicircular matroids. Recently, it was proved that all cosimple lattice path matroids have positive double circuits, while it was shown that there is a large class of cosimple bicircular matroids with no positive double circuits. These observations support Bonin and de Miers’ claim. Finally, Sivaraman and Slilaty suggested studying the intersection of lattice path matroids and bicircular matroids as a possibly interesting research topic. In this work, we exhibit the excluded bicircular matroids for the class of lattice path matroids, and we propose a characterization of the graph family whose bicircular matroids are lattice path matroids. As an application of this characterization, we propose a geometric description of 2-connected lattice path bicircular matroids.

There are only a finite number of excluded minors for the class of bicircular matroids

There are only a finite number of excluded minors for the class of bicircular matroids

Tree Automata and Pigeonhole Classes of Matroids: II

Let $\psi$ be a sentence in the counting monadic second-order logic of matroids and let F be a finite field. Hlineny's Theorem says that we can test whether F-representable matroids satisfy $\psi$ using an algorithm that is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to branch-width. In a previous paper we proved there is a similar fixed-parameter tractable algorithm that can test the members of any efficiently pigeonhole class. In this sequel we apply results from the first paper and thereby extend Hlineny's Theorem to the classes of fundamental transversal matroids, lattice path matroids, bicircular matroids, and H-gain-graphic matroids, when H is a finite group. As a consequence, we can obtain a new proof of Courcelle's Theorem.

Tree Automata and Pigeonhole Classes of Matroids: I

Hliněný’s Theorem shows that any sentence in the monadic second-order logic of matroids can be tested in polynomial time, when the input is limited to a class of {mathbb {F}}-representable matroids with bounded branch-width (where {mathbb {F}} is a finite field). If each matroid in a class can be decomposed by a subcubic tree in such a way that only a bounded amount of information flows across displayed separations, then the class has bounded decomposition-width. We introduce the pigeonhole property for classes of matroids: if every subclass with bounded branch-width also has bounded decomposition-width, then the class is pigeonhole. An efficiently pigeonhole class has a stronger property, involving an efficiently-computable equivalence relation on subsets of the ground set. We show that Hliněný’s Theorem extends to any efficiently pigeonhole class. In a sequel paper, we use these ideas to extend Hliněný’s Theorem to the classes of fundamental transversal matroids, lattice path matroids, bicircular matroids, and H-gain-graphic matroids, where H is any finite group. We also give a characterisation of the families of hypergraphs that can be described via tree automata: a family is defined by a tree automaton if and only if it has bounded decomposition-width. Furthermore, we show that if a class of matroids has the pigeonhole property, and can be defined in monadic second-order logic, then any subclass with bounded branch-width has a decidable monadic second-order theory.

The Family of Bicircular Matroids Closed Under Duality

We characterize the 3-connected members of the intersection of the class of bicircular and cobicircular matroids. Aside from some exceptional matroids with rank and corank at most 5, this class consists of just the free swirls and their minors.

Defining Bicircular Matroids in Monadic Logic

Abstract We conjecture that the class of frame matroids can be characterized by a sentence in the monadic second-order logic of matroids, and we prove that there is such a characterization for the class of bicircular matroids. The proof does not depend on an excluded-minor characterization.

Approximately counting bases of bicircular matroids

AbstractWe give a fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the number of bases in bicircular matroids. This is a natural class of matroids for which counting bases exactly is #P-hard and yet approximate counting can be done efficiently.

Frame matroids, toric ideals, and a conjecture of White

Frame matroids, toric ideals, and a conjecture of White

Formula omitted]-circular matroids of graphs

formula omitted]-circular matroids of graphs

On graphs uniquely defined by their [formula omitted]-circular matroids

On graphs uniquely defined by their [formula omitted]-circular matroids

Representations of Bicircular Lift Matroids

Bicircular lift matroids are a class of matroids defined on the edge set of a graph. For a given graph $G$, the circuits of its bicircular lift matroid are the edge sets of those subgraphs of $G$ that contain at least two cycles, and are minimal with respect to this property. The main result of this paper is a characterization of when two graphs give rise to the same bicircular lift matroid, which answers a question proposed by Irene Pivotto. In particular, aside from some appropriately defined "small" graphs, two graphs have the same bicircular lift matroid if and only if they are $2$-isomorphic in the sense of Whitney.

Bicircular matroids representable over [formula omitted] or [formula omitted

Bicircular matroids representable over [formula omitted] or [formula omitted

Bicircular matroids are 3-colorable

Bicircular matroids are 3-colorable

Graphical Representations of Graphic Frame Matroids

A frame matroid M is graphic if there is a graph G with cycle matroid isomorphic to M. In general, if there is one such graph, there will be many. Zaslavsky has shown that frame matroids are precisely those having a representation as a biased graph; this class includes graphic matroids, bicircular matroids, and Dowling geometries. Whitney characterized which graphs have isomorphic cycle matroids, and Matthews characterised which graphs have isomorphic graphic bicircular matroids. In this paper, we give a characterization of which biased graphs give rise to isomorphic graphic frame matroids.

Fixing Numbers for Matroids

Motivated by work in graph theory, we define the fixing number for a matroid. We give upper and lower bounds for fixing numbers for a general matroid in terms of the size and maximum orbit size (under the action of the matroid automorphism group). We prove the fixing numbers for the cycle matroid and bicircular matroid associated with 3-connected graphs are identical. Many of these results have interpretations through permutation groups, and we make this connection explicit.

Unavoidable Minors of Large 4-Connected Bicircular Matroids

It is known that any 3-connected matroid that is large enough is certain to contain a minor of a given size belonging to one of a few special classes of matroids. This paper proves a similar unavoidable minor result for large 4-connected bicircular matroids. The main result follows from establishing the list of unavoidable minors of large 4-biconnected graphs, which are the graphs representing the 4-connected bicircular matroids. This paper also gives similar results for internally 4-connected and vertically 4-connected bicircular matroids.

Bicircular signed-graphic matroids

Bicircular signed-graphic matroids

Minimum‐weight subgraphs with unicyclic components and a lower‐bounded girth

AbstractThis article focuses on the problem of computing a minimum‐weight subgraph with unicyclic connected components. Although this problem is generally easy, it becomes difficult when a girth constraint is added. A polyhedral study is proposed. Many facets and valid inequalities are derived. Some of them can be exactly separated in polynomial time. Hence, the problem is solved by a cutting‐plane algorithm based on these inequalities and using a compact formulation derived from the transversality of the bicircular matroid. Numerical results are also presented. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013

Networks with unicyclic connected components and without short cycles

Networks with unicyclic connected components and without short cycles

Designing Steiner Networks with Unicyclic Connected Components: An Easy Problem

This paper focuses on the design of minimum-cost networks satisfying two technical constraints. First, the connected components should be unicyclic. Second, some given special nodes must belong to cycles. This problem is a generalization of two known problems: the perfect binary 2-matching problem and the problem of computing a minimum-weight basis of the bicircular matroid. It turns out that the problem is polynomially solvable. An exact extended linear formulation is provided. We also present a partial description of the convex hull of the incidence vectors of these Steiner networks. Polynomial-time separation algorithms are described. One of them is a generalization of the Padberg–Rao algorithm to separate blossom inequalities.