White's symmetric exchange conjecture for matroid bases

Let M\mathrm{M} be a matroid, and let {B1,B2}\{B_1,B_2\} and {B1,B2}\{B_1',B_2'\} be unordered pairs of bases such that the multiset union of B1B_1 and B2B_2 is equal to the multiset union of B1B_1' and B2B_2'. Farber's conjecture. It is possible to obtain {B1,B2}\{B_1',B_2'\} from {B1,B2}\{B_1,B_2\} by repeatedly replacing {B1,B2}\{B_1,B_2\} by a symmetric exchange {B~1,B~2}\{\tilde{B}_1,\tilde{B}_2\}. This is the s=2s=2 case of White's symmetric exchange conjecture, also known as Farber's conjecture. The paper gives a counterexample to this assertion, so it is false.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Matt Larson, “Counterexamples to two conjectures about matroids”, arXiv:2607.02208 (2026).

Additional references

12 papers in this index state this conjecture (2010–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2606.13960, arXiv:2511.00696, arXiv:2510.04163, arXiv:2507.12100, arXiv:2101.03081, arXiv:1811.00272, arXiv:1601.08199, arXiv:1501.00224, arXiv:1412.4496, arXiv:1312.3428, arXiv:1011.1010.

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