Rigidity theory for matroids (Q863624)

The study of the rigidity properties of a bar-and-joint framework in \(d\)-space from the properties of the underlying graph \(G\) is called combinatorial rigidity. Several matroids on the edge set of \(G\) arise in this fashion, in particular the \(d\)-dimensional generic rigidity matroid and the \(d\)-dimensional parallel matroid. For dimension~2 both of these matroids coincide with a matroid from a simple count called Laman's condition. This coincidence is refered to as planar trinity. By replacing the graph \(G\) with a matroid \(M\) represented over an arbitrary field \(F\), the authors broaden the scope of combinatorial rigidity. The bar-and-joint framework, that is the embedding of \(G\) in \(d\)-space, is replaced by a photo of the matroid \(M\) in \(F^d\). The space of photos of \(M\) is an algebraic variety whose irreducibility can be determined combinatorially. If \(F\) is finite, the number of photos of \(M\) can be counted by an evaluation of the Tutte polynomial. The main result of the paper is a nesting theorem which expresses the relationship between rigidity complex, slope complex, and matroid complex and contains planar trinity. A nice example of this generalization is provided by taking \(M\) to be a uniform matroid. Six open problems are posed.