Short Rainbow Circuits in Regular Matroids
Abstract
DeVos et al conjectured that if $M$ is a simple, regular matroid and $c$ is a colouring of the elements of $M$ with $r(M)+1$ colours, where each colour class has at least two elements, then $M$ contains a rainbow circuit of size at most $\lceil \frac {r(M)+1}2 \rceil.$ We prove this conjecture by showing that for all such regular matroids there are four rainbow circuits $C_i,\ i = 1,2,3,4$ for which $\sum_i |C_i| \le 2r(M) +4$ and for which no element of $M$ belongs to more than two of the circuits.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Advanced Graph Theory Research
Limits and Structures in Graph Theory
Advanced Combinatorial Mathematics
Publication details
- Journal / source
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Publication date
- 24 January 2026
- Document type
- Preprint