Hindrance from a wasteful common independent set

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Joó, Attila
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Joó, Attila
author_facet Joó, Attila
contents For (potentially infinite) matroids $ M $ and $ N $, an $ (M,N) $-hindrance is a set $ H$ that is independent but not spanning in $ N.\mathsf{span}_M(H) $. This concept was introduced by Aharoni and Ziv in the very first paper investigating Nash-Williams' Matroid Intersection Conjecture. They proved that the conjecture is equivalent to the statement that the non-existence of hindrances implies the existence of an $ M $-independent spanning set of $ N $. In this paper we present a breakthrough towards the Matroid Intersection Conjecture. Namely, we found a matroidal generalization of the `popular vertex' approach applied in the proof of the infinite version of König's theorem. The main result of this paper is an application of this new approach to show that if $ M $ and $ N $ admit a common independent set $ I $ that is ``wasteful'' in the sense that $ r(M/I)<r(N/I) $, then there exists an $ (M,N) $-hindrance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_04342
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hindrance from a wasteful common independent set
Joó, Attila
Combinatorics
For (potentially infinite) matroids $ M $ and $ N $, an $ (M,N) $-hindrance is a set $ H$ that is independent but not spanning in $ N.\mathsf{span}_M(H) $. This concept was introduced by Aharoni and Ziv in the very first paper investigating Nash-Williams' Matroid Intersection Conjecture. They proved that the conjecture is equivalent to the statement that the non-existence of hindrances implies the existence of an $ M $-independent spanning set of $ N $. In this paper we present a breakthrough towards the Matroid Intersection Conjecture. Namely, we found a matroidal generalization of the `popular vertex' approach applied in the proof of the infinite version of König's theorem. The main result of this paper is an application of this new approach to show that if $ M $ and $ N $ admit a common independent set $ I $ that is ``wasteful'' in the sense that $ r(M/I)<r(N/I) $, then there exists an $ (M,N) $-hindrance.
title Hindrance from a wasteful common independent set
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.04342