The smallest matroids with no large independent flat (Q2227827)

Summary: We show that a simple rank-\(r\) matroid with no \((t+1)\)-element independent flat has at least as many elements as the matroid \(M_{r,t}\) defined to be the direct sum of \(t\) binary projective geometries whose ranks pairwise differ by at most \(1\). We also show for \(r \geqslant 2t\) that \(M_{r,t}\) is the unique example for which equality holds.