Matroids Arising From Nested Sequences of Flats In Projective And Affine Geometries

Abstract

Targets are matroids that arise from a nested sequence of flats in a projective geometry. This class of matroids was introduced by Nelson and Nomoto, who found the forbidden induced restrictions for binary targets. This paper generalizes their result to targets arising from projective geometries over $GF(q)$. We also consider targets arising from nested sequences of affine flats and determine the forbidden induced restrictions for affine targets.