On the Packing/Covering Conjecture of Infinite Matroids

Publication date 27 March 2021

Abstract: The Packing/Covering Conjecture was introduced by Bowler and Carmesin motivated by the Matroid Partition Theorem by Edmonds and Fulkerson. A packing for a family

(M_{i} : i i n T h e t a)

of matroids on the common edge set

E

is a system

(S_{i} : i i n T h e t a)

of pairwise disjoint subsets of

E

where

S_{i}

is panning in

M_{i}

. Similarly, a covering is a system

(I_{i} : i i n T h e t a)

with

where

I_{i}

is independent in

M_{i}

. The conjecture states that for every matroid family on

E

there is a partition

E = E_{p} s q c u p E_{c}

such that

(M_{i} u p h a r p o o n r i g h t E_{p} : i i n T h e t a)

admits a packing and

(M_{i} . E_{c} : i i n T h e t a)

admits a covering. We prove the special case where

E

is countable and each

M_{i}

is either finitary or cofinitary. The connection between packing/covering and matroid intersection problems discovered by Bowler and Carmesin can be established for every well-behaved matroid class. This makes possible to approach the problem from the direction of matroid intersection. We show that the generalized version of Nash-Williams' Matroid Intersection Conjecture holds for countable matroids having only finitary and cofinitary components.

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