Extension Spaces Of Oriented Matroids

Extension Spaces of Oriented Matroids

Oriented Matroids

Oriented matroids are a very natural mathematical concept which presents itself in many different guises and which has connections and applications to many different areas. These include discrete and computational geometry, combinatorics, convexity, topology, algebraic geometry, operations research, computer science and theoretical chemistry. This is the second edition of the first comprehensive, accessible account of the subject. It is intended for a diverse audience: graduate students who wish to learn the subject from scratch; researchers in the various fields of application who want to concentrate on certain aspects of the theory; specialists who need a thorough reference work; and others at academic points in between. A list of exercises and open problems ends each chapter. For the second edition, the authors have expanded the bibliography greatly to ensure that it remains comprehensive and up-to-date, and they have also added an appendix surveying research since the work was first published.

Extension Spaces of Oriented Matriods

Abstract: "We study the space of all extensions of a real hyperplance arrangement by a new pseudo-hyperplane, and, more generally, of an oriented matroid by a new element. The question whether this space has the homotopy type of a sphere is a special case of the 'Generalized Baues Problem' of Billera, Kapranov & Sturmfels, via the Bohne-Dress Theorem on zonotopal tilings. We prove that the extension space is spherical for the class of strongly euclidean oriented matroids. This class includes the alternating matroids and all oriented matroids of rank at most 3 or of corank at most 2. In general it is not even known whether the extension space is connected. We show that the subspace of realizable extensions is always connected but not necessarily spherical."