Abstract
Problems involving representability are among the most frequently studied of all the problems in matroid theory. This paper considers the corresponding class of problems for polymatroids. A polymatroidh on the setS is representable over a free matroid or is Boolean if there is a map ϕ fromS into the set of subsets of a setV which preserves rank, that is for all subsetsA ofS,\(h(A) = \left| {\bigcup\limits_{a \in A} {\phi (a)} } \right|\). The class of Boolean polymatroids is minor-closed and in this paper we investigate the excluded minors of this class. In particular, we determine all such Boolean excluded minors that are 2-polymatroids.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
W. H. Cunningham: Decomposition of submodular functions,Combinatorica 3 (1983), 53–68.
T. Helgason: Aspects of the theory of hypermatroids, in: “Hypergraph Seminar” (C. Berge and D. K. Ray-Chaudhuri, Eds.), Lecture Notes in Math. 411, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1974, 191–214
J. P. S. Kung: The Rédei function of a relation,J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 29 (1980), 287–296.
L. Lovász: Flats in matroids and geometric graphs, in: “Combinatorial Surveys” (P. Cameron, Ed.), Academic Press, London, 1977. 45–86
L. Lovász: The matroid matching problem, in: “Algebraic Methods in Graph Theory, II” (L. Lovász and V. T. Sós, Eds.), Colloq. Math. Soc. János Bolyai, 25, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1981. 495–517
L. Lovász: Submodular functions and convexity, in: “Mathematical Programming: The State of the Art” (A. Bachem et al., Eds.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1983. 235–257
L. Lovász andM. D. Plummer:Matching Theory, Annals of Discrete Mathematics, 29, North Holland, Amsterdam 1986
G. Whittle: The critical problem for polymatroids,Quart. J. Math. Oxford, to appear.
G. Whittle: A geometric theory of hypergraph colouring,Aequationes Mathematicae 43 (1992), 45–58.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was partially supported by a grant from the Louisiana Education Quality Support Fund Through the Board of Regents
This research was supported by a grant from the Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Research Council
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Oxley, J., Whittle, G. Some excluded-minor theorems for a class of polymatroids. Combinatorica 13, 467–476 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01303518
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01303518