Interlacement and Activities in Delta-Matroids

Abstract

We generalize theories of graph, matroid, and ribbon-graph activities to delta-matroids. As a result, we obtain an activities based feasible-set expansion for a transition polynomial of delta-matroids defined by Brijder and Hoogeboom. This result yields feasible-set expansions for the two-variable Bollob\'{a}s-Riordan and interlace polynomials of a delta-matroid. In the former case, the expansion obtained directly generalizes the activities expansions of the Tutte polynomial of graphs and matroids.