A construction of infinite sets of intertwines for pairs of matroids

Abstract

An intertwine of a pair of matroids is a matroid such that it, but none of its proper minors, has minors that are isomorphic to each matroid in the pair. For pairs for which neither matroid can be obtained, up to isomorphism, from the other by taking free extensions, free coextensions, and minors, we construct a family of rank-k intertwines for each sufficiently large integer k. We also treat some properties of these intertwines.