Enumerating Matroids and Linear Spaces

TL;DR

This paper establishes the asymptotic count of linear spaces and rank-3 matroids on n points, advancing the enumeration of fixed-rank matroids with a novel quasirandomness approach for bounding clique decompositions.

Contribution

It introduces a new quasirandomness-based method to bound clique decompositions, completing the enumeration of fixed-rank matroids at this level of accuracy.

Findings

Number of linear spaces on n points is approximately (cn+o(n))^{n^2/6}.

Number of rank-3 matroids on n points is approximately (cn+o(n))^{n^2/6}.

New quasirandomness approach replaces entropy method for bounding clique decompositions.

Abstract

We show that the number of linear spaces on a set of $n$ points and the number of rank-3 matroids on a ground set of size $n$ are both of the form $(cn+o(n))^{n^2/6}$, where $c=e^{\sqrt 3/2-3}(1+\sqrt 3)/2$. This is the final piece of the puzzle for enumerating fixed-rank matroids at this level of accuracy: the numbers of rank-1 and rank-2 matroids on a ground set of size $n$ have exact representations in terms of well-known combinatorial functions, and it was recently proved by van der Hofstad, Pendavingh, and van der Pol that for constant $r\ge 4$ there are $(e^{1-r}n+o(n))^{n^{r-1}/r!}$ rank-$r$ matroids on a ground set of size $n$. In our proof, we introduce a new approach for bounding the number of clique decompositions of a complete graph, using quasirandomness instead of the so-called entropy method that is common in this area.