On minor-minimally-connected matroids (Q798327)

By a well-known result of \textit{W. T. Tutte} [see Can. J. Math. 18, 1301- 1324 (1966; Zbl 0149.215)] or \textit{H. H. Crapo} [J. Comb. Theory 2, 406- 417 (1967; Zbl 0168.262)], if e is an element of a connected matroid M, then either the deletion or the contraction of e from M is connected. In the paper under review, the author studies the class of minor-minimally- connected matroids, that is, those connected matroids M with the property that exactly one of \(M\backslash e\) or M/e is connected for every element e. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, a characterization of such matroids is given. This characterization is then used in Section 3 to prove several results on the occurrence of 2-element circuits and 2- element cocircuits in minor-minimally-connected matroids. And finally, in Section 4 a new result on the number of 2-element cocircuits in a minimally connected matroid is established.