Abstract
A flat cover is a collection of flats identifying the non-bases of a matroid. We introduce the notion of cover complexity, the minimal size of such a flat cover, as a measure for the complexity of a matroid, and present bounds on the number of matroids on n elements whose cover complexity is bounded. We apply cover complexity to show that the class of matroids without an N-minor is asymptotically small in case N is one of the sparse paving matroids U2,k, U3,6, P6, Q6 or R6, thus confirming a few special cases of a conjecture due to Mayhew, Newman, Welsh, and Whittle. On the other hand, we show a lower bound on the number of matroids without an M(K4)-minor which asymptotically matches the best known lower bound on the number of all matroids, due to Knuth.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 126-147 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B |
Volume | 111 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2015 |
Keywords
- Algorithmic complexity
- Asymptotic enumeration
- Excluded minor
- Matroid