Geelen's conjecture on preserving two matroid connectivities

For a matroid MM on ground set E(M)E(M), let Q,R,S,TE(M)Q,R,S,T\subseteq E(M) satisfy QR=ST=Q\cap R=S\cap T=\emptyset. Write

k:=κM(Q,R),l:=κM(S,T).k:=\kappa_M(Q,R),\qquad l:=\kappa_M(S,T).

Let c:N2Nc:\mathbb{N}^2\to\mathbb{N} be a function. Geelen's conjecture. There exists such a function cc with the following property: if

E(M)(QRST)c(k,l),|E(M){-}(Q\cup R\cup S\cup T)|\geq c(k,l),

then some element eE(M)(QRST)e\in E(M){-}(Q\cup R\cup S\cup T) satisfies either

κMe(Q,R)=kandκMe(S,T)=l,\kappa_{M{-} e}(Q,R)=k\quad\text{and}\quad\kappa_{M{-} e}(S,T)=l,

or

κM/e(Q,R)=kandκM/e(S,T)=l.\kappa_{M/e}(Q,R)=k\quad\text{and}\quad\kappa_{M/e}(S,T)=l.

Here κM\kappa_M denotes the matroid connectivity between two disjoint sets. The conjecture predicts that a sufficiently large set of elements outside the four terminals contains an element whose deletion or contraction preserves both prescribed connectivities; the paper's abstract indicates that this is proved for sufficiently large representable matroids, with a stronger finite-field result, but the supplied material does not establish the conjecture in its full stated generality.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Tony Huynh and Stefan van Zwam, “Intertwining connectivities in representable matroids”, arXiv:1304.6488 (2018).

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