Fiona Young (Cornell)
The singleton and doubleton minors of a polymatroid encode a surprising amount of information about its structural complexity. Starting with a $k$-polymatroid $\rho$, we subtract from it as many maximally-separated matroids as possible. Let the result be an $m$-polymatroid; this gives rise to a notion of boundedness for $\rho$. When $k$ is sufficiently large, the bounds on the singleton and doubleton minors of $\rho$ completely determine the bound on $\rho$. Much of this is motivated and guided by the polytopal perspective of polymatroids. Our results provide an organized framework for thinking about polymatroid excluded minor problems.