Excluding a line from positroids

Abstract

For all positive integers $\ell$ and $r$, we determine the maximum number of elements of a simple rank-$r$ positroid without the rank-$2$ uniform matroid $U_{2,\ell+2}$ as a minor, and characterize the matroids with the maximum number of elements. We prove this as a consequence of a more general result, which also determines the maximum number of elements of a simple rank-$r$ bicircular matroid, lattice path matroid, multi-path matroid, or colaminar matroid with no $U_{2,\ell+2}$-minor. This result continues a long line of research into upper bounds on the number of elements of matroids from various classes that forbid $U_{2,\ell+2}$ as a minor. This is the first paper to study positroids in this context, and it suggests methods to study similar problems for other classes of matroids, such as gammoids or base-orderable matroids.