Finite tests and low-rank excluded minors for matroid path-width two

Abstract

The path-width of a matroid is the minimum, over all orderings of its ground set, of the maximum value of its connectivity function on an initial segment. For any two connected rooted matroids whose roots are neither loops nor coloops, we form the 2-sum of each with a third such rooted matroid by identifying their roots and deleting the common element. The two original rooted matroids are equivalent when these sums agree on whether their path-width is at most two for every choice of the third rooted matroid. We prove that the two rooted matroids are equivalent if and only if this agreement holds for thirteen fixed graphic or cographic rooted matroids. They distinguish exactly twenty equivalence classes, and, moreover, there exists no family of twelve fixed connected rooted matroids that can guarantee this. Using these classes, we show that the tree in the canonical tree decomposition of an excluded minor for path-width at most two has diameter at most ten edges. For a connected matroid given by a tree decomposition using 2-sums, we give an exact recurrence to decide whether its path-width is at most two and to construct an ordering of width at most two when possible. Moreover, we derive a formula for the path-width of parallel extensions that gives complete binary excluded-minor lists in ranks three, four and five, containing two, four and eleven isomorphism classes, respectively.