A Characterization of Tutte Invariants of 2-Polymatroids
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-1993
Abstract
This paper develops a theory of Tutte invariants for 2-polymatroids that parallels the corresponding theory for matroids. It is shown that such 2-polymatroid Invariants arise in the enumeration of a wide variety of combinatorial structures including matchings and perfect matchings in graphs, weak colourings in hypergraphs, and common bases in pairs of matroids. The main result characterizes all such invariants proving that, with some trivial exceptions, every 2-polymatroid Tutte invariant can be easily expressed in terms of a certain two-variable polynomial that is closely related to the Tutte polynomial of a matroid. © 1993 by Academic Press, Inc.
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B
First Page
210
Last Page
244
Recommended Citation
Oxley, J., & Whittle, G. (1993). A Characterization of Tutte Invariants of 2-Polymatroids. Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, 59 (2), 210-244. https://doi.org/10.1006/jctb.1993.1067