Injection geometries (Q801926)

Several attempts have been made in the literature to generalize the concept of matroids by relaxing its axioms. In terms of the rank function some generalizations have relaxed its subcardinality, like polymatroids, some have relaxed its submodularity like antimatroids or greedoids. Injection geometries can be considered as generalizations along the first line, i.e. its rank function remains submodular if the rank of the union of two sets is finite. They can be viewed as common generalizations of matroids and permutation geometries introduced by \textit{P. J. Cameron} nd \textit{M. Deza} [J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 20, 373-386 (1979; Zbl 0449.05016)]. This paper gives some examples and basic facts about injection geometries. A natural concept to define injection geometries is via flats, but they can be defined also via rank, bases, circuits or closure. Further, injection designs are introduced analogously to matroid designs. Theorem 5.1 provides an extremal set theoretic characterization of injection designs. It would be interesting to see further examples of injection geometries arising from different branches of combinatorics.