Extensions of weak matroids over skew tracts and strong matroids over stringent skew hyperfields

Abstract: Matroids over skew tracts provide an algebraic framework simultaneously generalizing the notions of linear subspaces, matroids, oriented matroids, phased matroids, and some other "matroids with extra structure". A single-element extension of a matroid $\mathcal{M}$ over a skew tract $T$ is a matroid $\widetilde{\mathcal{M}}$ over $T$ obtained from $\mathcal{M}$ by adding one more element. Crapo characterized single-element extensions of ordinary matroids, and Las Vergnas characterized single-element extensions of oriented matroids, in terms of single-element extensions of their rank 2 contractions. The results of Crapo and Las Vergnas do not generalize to matroids over skew tracts, but we will show a necessary and sufficient condition on skew tracts, called Pathetic Cancellation, such that the result can generalize to weak matroids over skew tracts. Stringent skew hyperfields are a special case of skew tracts which behave in many ways like skew fields. We find a characterization of single-element extensions of strong matroids over stringent skew hyperfields.