Spikes are an important class of 3-connected matroids. For an integer r ! 3, there is a unique binary r-spike denoted by Z r. When a circuit-hyperplane of Z r is relaxed, we obtain another spike and repeating this procedure will produce other non-binary spikes. The es-splitting operation on a binary spike of rank r, may not yield a spike. In this paper, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the es-splitting operation to construct Z rþ1 directly from Z r. Indeed, all binary spikes and many of non-binary spikes of each rank can be derived from the spike Z 3 by a sequence of the es-splitting operations and circuit-hyperplane relaxations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.