Excluded minors for Boolean polymatroids (Q5937943)

A polymatroid function \(h: 2^N\to \mathbb{Z}\) is Boolean if it can be represented in the form \(h(I)=|\bigcup_{i\in I}\phi(i)|\) for a set function \(\phi: N\to 2^M\). Necessary and sufficient conditions for a polymatroid to be Boolean are presented by describing \(h\) as a linear combination over rank-one matroids or equivalently requiring a linear operator on \(h\) to be positive, which yields \(2^n -1\) inequalities. The main result is an explicit description of all excluded minors of the class of Boolean polymatroids.