Hamiltonian Connectivity of Some Base-Cobase Graphs

Abstract

There has been wide interest in understanding which properties of base graphs of matroids extend to base-cobase graphs of matroids. A significant result of Naddef and Pulleyblank (1984) shows that the $1$-skeleton of any $(0,1)$-polytope is either a hypercube, or Hamiltonian connected, i.e. there is a Hamiltonian path connecting any two vertices. In particular, this is true for base graphs of matroids. A natural question raised by Farber, Richter, and Shank (1985) is whether this extends to base-cobase graphs.

First, we use the polytopal approach to show Hamiltonian connectivity of base-cobase graphs of series-parallel extensions of lattice path matroids. On the other hand, we show that this method extends to only very special classes related to identically self-dual matroids. Second, we show that base-cobase graphs of wheels and whirls are Hamiltonian connected. Last, we show that the regular matroid $R_{10}$ yields a negative answer to the question of Farber, Richter, and Shank.