Bases-cobases graphs and polytopes of matroids (Q684402)

Paraphrasing the authors' summary, let \(M\) be a block matroid, i.e., a matroid whose ground set \(E\) is a disjoint union of two bases. Then the graph \(G= G(M,M^*)\) having as vertices the bases \(B\) of \(M\) for which the complement \(E\backslash B\) is also a base, and edges the unordered pairs \((B,B')\) of such bases differing exactly by two elements is said to be the bases-cobases graph associated with \(M\). And moreover, the polytope \(K=K(M,M^*)\) whose extreme points are the incidence vectors of the bases of \(M\) whose complement is also a base is said to be the polytope of the bases-cobases. The following two main results are proved: (1) If \(M\) is a graphic block matroid, then any pair of vertices of \(G(M,M^*)\) corresponding to complementary bases is joined by a path of length \(\text{rank}(M)\). (2) If \(M\) is a block matroid, then \(K(M,M^*)\) is a hypercube if and only if \(\dim(K)=\text{rank}(M)\). The first of these results generalizes a result previously proved by \textit{Y. Kajitani}, \textit{S. Ueno} and \textit{H. Miyano} [Discrete Math. 72, No. 1-3, 187-194 (1988; Zbl 0657.05018)].