Sur la compatibilité des extensions ponctuelles d'un matroïde (Q789392)

Single elements extensions of a matroid \(M=M(E)\) can be characterized by resp. associated with modular cuts of M(E), i.e. with certain families of flats in M(E). Modular cuts are called compatible if the corresponding single element extensions by different new elements can be embedded into an extension of M using all of the additional elements. One section of the paper is devoted to sufficient conditions for the compatibility of modular cuts and the study of the extensions determined by modular cuts meeting these conditions. For the latter a rather simple characterization can be given. Families of principal modular cuts (i.e. those consisting of all flats containing a given flat) are a special case of such modular cuts. The other section studies the case of just two modular cuts and a new condition for compatibility is given here which makes use of the notion of a sheaf of flats. This is connected with a characterization of extensions \(N(E\cup P)\) of M(E) such that N(P) is a matroid of rank two. As a corollary one obtains a previous characterization contained in \textit{A. Cheung's} thesis [Compatibility of extensions of a combinatorial geometry, Thesis, Univ. of Waterloo, Ontario (1974)].