On the Cogirth of Binary Matroids

Abstract

The cogirth, $g^\ast(M)$, of a matroid $M$ is the size of a smallest cocircuit of $M$. Finding the cogirth of a graphic matroid can be done in polynomial time, but Vardy showed in 1997 that it is NP-hard to find the cogirth of a binary matroid. In this paper, we show that $g^\ast(M)\leq \frac{1}{2}\vert E(M)\vert$ when $M$ is binary, unless $M$ simplifies to a projective geometry. We also show that, when equality holds, $M$ simplifies to a Bose-Burton geometry, that is, a matroid of the form $PG(r-1,2)-PG(k-1,2)$. These results extend to matroids representable over arbitrary finite fields.