A splitter theorem for 3-connected 2-polymatroids (Q2420565)

Summary: Seymour's splitter theorem is a basic inductive tool for dealing with 3-connected matroids. This paper proves a generalization of that theorem for the class of 2-polymatroids. Such structures include matroids, and they model both sets of points and lines in a projective space and sets of edges in a graph. A series compression in such a structure is an analogue of contracting an edge of a graph that is in a series pair. A 2-polymatroid \(N\) is an s-minor of a 2-polymatroid \(M\) if \(N\) can be obtained from \(M\) by a sequence of contractions, series compressions, and dual-contractions, where the last are modified deletions. The main result proves that if \(M\) and \(N\) are 3-connected 2-polymatroids such that \(N\) is an s-minor of \(M\), then \(M\) has a 3-connected s-minor \(M^\prime\) that has an s-minor isomorphic to \(N\) and has \(|E(M)|-1\) elements unless \(M\) is a whirl or the cycle matroid of a wheel. In the exceptional case, such an \(M^\prime\) can be found with \(|E(M)|-2\) elements.