Steven Tedford (Franklin and Marshall)

Connectivity in Lifts of Greedoids

Abstract for the Combinatorics Seminar 2006 April 27

A greedoid is an abstract combinatorial structure that captures the essence of the greedy algorithm in combinatorial optimization.

From a given greedoid one can form new ones by a construction called lifting. Theorem: When a greedoid is k-connected, then all of its lifts are, too.

I will introduce greedoids and required background that leads to this result. I will also discuss sufficient and necessary conditions for the lift of an undirected branching greedoid to be two-connected.