Circuit-Difference Matroids

Abstract

One characterization of binary matroids is that the symmetric difference of every pair of intersecting circuits is a disjoint union of circuits. This paper considers circuit-difference matroids, that is, those matroids in which the symmetric difference of every pair of intersecting circuits is a single circuit. Our main result shows that a connected regular matroid is circuit-difference if and only if it contains no pair of skew circuits. Using a result of Pfeil, this enables us to explicitly determine all regular circuit-difference matroids. The class of circuit-difference matroids is not closed under minors, but it is closed under series minors. We characterize the infinitely many excluded series minors for the class.