Elastic elements in 3-connected matroids

Abstract

It follows by Bixby's Lemma that if $e$ is an element of a $3$-connected matroid $M$, then either ${\rm co}(M\delete e)$, the cosimplification of $M\delete e$, or ${\rm si}(M/e)$, the simplification of $M/e$, is $3$-connected. A natural question to ask is whether $M$ has an element $e$ such that both ${\rm co}(M\delete e)$ and ${\rm si}(M/e)$ are $3$-connected. Calling such an element "elastic", in this paper we show that if $|E(M)|\ge 4$, then $M$ has at least four elastic elements provided $M$ has no $4$-element fans and, up to duality, $M$ has no $3$-separating set $S$ that is the disjoint union of a rank-$2$ subset and a corank-$2$ subset of $E(M)$ such that $M|S$ is isomorphic to a member or a single-element deletion of a member of a certain family of matroids.