Cospanning characterizations of antimatroids and convex geometries

TL;DR

This paper provides a new cospanning characterization of antimatroids and convex geometries, revealing their unique structural properties and connections with closure operators and extreme points.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cospanning framework that characterizes antimatroids and convex geometries, linking them through equivalence relations and extreme points.

Findings

Feasible sets of convex geometries are maximal in cospanning classes.

Equivalence classes form intervals between extreme points and closures.

New properties of closure and extreme point operators are established.

Abstract

Given a finite set $E$ and an operator $\sigma:2^{E}\longrightarrow2^{E}$, two sets $X,Y\subseteq E$ are \textit{cospanning} if $\sigma\left( X\right) =\sigma\left( Y\right) $. Corresponding \textit{cospanning equivalence relations} were investigated for greedoids in much detail (Korte, Lovasz, Schrader; 1991). For instance, these relations determine greedoids uniquely. In fact, the feasible sets of a greedoid are exactly the inclusion-wise minimal sets of the equivalence classes. In this research, we show that feasible sets of convex geometries are the inclusion-wise maximal sets of the equivalence classes of the corresponding closure operator. Same as greedoids, convex geometries are uniquely defined by the corresponding cospanning relations. For each closure operator $\sigma$, an element $x\in X$ is \textit{an extreme point} of $X$ if $x\notin\sigma(X-x)$. The set of extreme points of $X$ is denoted by $ex(X)$. We prove, that if $\sigma$ has the anti-exchange property, then for every set $X$ its equivalence class $[X]_{\sigma}$ is the interval $[ex(X),\sigma(X)]$. It results in the one-to-one correspondence between the cospanning partitions of an antimatroid and its complementary convex geometry. The obtained results are based on the connection between violator spaces, greedoids, and antimatroids. Cospanning characterization of these combinatorial structures allows us not only to give the new characterization of antimatroids and convex geometries but also to obtain the new properties of closure operators, extreme point operators, and their interconnections.