Dress's rank formula conjecture for 3-dimensional rigidity matroids

Let GG be an R3\mathcal{R}_3-closed graph, let X^\hat{\mathcal{X}} be the set of maximal cliques in GG of size at least five, and let FF be the set of edges of GG not covered by X^\hat{\mathcal{X}}. For a collection X\mathcal{X} of vertex subsets, write degX(h)\deg_{\mathcal{X}}(h) for the number of sets containing the hinge hh, and let H(X)\mathcal{H}(\mathcal{X}) be the set of hinges, namely pairs with degree at least two.

The Dress Conjecture. The rank of GG satisfies

r3(G)=F+XX^(3X6)hH(X^)(degX^(h)1).r_3(G)=|F|+\sum_{X\in \hat{\mathcal{X}}}(3|X|-6)-\sum_{h\in \mathcal{H}(\hat{\mathcal{X}})}(\deg_{\hat{\mathcal{X}}}(h)-1).

The conjecture proposes a rank formula for R3\mathcal{R}_3-closed graphs. The analogous formula is known for the cofactor matroid C21\mathcal{C}_2^1, providing evidence, while the conjecture remains open for the 3-dimensional rigidity matroid.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Bill Jackson, Tibor Jordán and Soma Villányi, “Rank Contributions of Vertices in Rigidity Matroids of Clique Covered Graphs”, arXiv:2607.26266 (2026).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2011–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:1104.4415.

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