Clonal Cores and Flexipaths in Matroids

Abstract. A partitioned matroid [Formula: see text] consists of a matroid [Formula: see text] and a partition [Formula: see text] of its ground set. As such structures arise frequently in structural matroid theory, this paper introduces a general technique for analyzing those special properties of partitioned matroids that depend solely on the values of the connectivities [Formula: see text], the local connectivities [Formula: see text], and the dual local connectivities [Formula: see text]. In particular, we consider those partitioned matroids in which each [Formula: see text] is an independent, coindependent set of clones of cardinality [Formula: see text]. Calling such partitioned matroids clonal-core matroids, we show that special results of the above type for partitioned matroids can be verified in general by proving them just for clonal-core matroids. Aiming at the long-term goal of finding the unavoidable minors of 4-connected matroids, we illustrate this technique by studying 4-paths. These are sequences [Formula: see text] of sets that partition the ground set of a matroid so that the union of any proper initial segment of parts is 4-separating. Viewing the ends [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] as fixed, we call such a partition a 4-flexipath if [Formula: see text] is a 4-path for all permutations [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text]. A straightforward simplification enables us to focus on [Formula: see text]-flexipaths for some [Formula: see text] in [Formula: see text], that is, those 4-flexipaths for which [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] for all distinct [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Our main result for 4-paths is that the only nontrivial case that arises here is when [Formula: see text]. In that case, there are essentially only two possible dual pairs of [Formula: see text]-flexipaths when [Formula: see text].