Generalizing the Multiple Exchange Property for Matroid Bases (2511.16021v1)

Abstract: The multiple exchange property for matroid bases states that for any bases $A$ and $B$ of a matroid and any subset $X\subseteq A\setminus B$, there exists a subset $Y\subseteq B\setminus A$ such that both $A-X+Y$ and $B+X-Y$ are bases. This classical result has not only found applications in matroid theory, but also in the analysis and design of various algorithms. In our work, we prove a common generalization of this and other known basis exchange properties by showing that for any subsets $X \subseteq A \setminus B$ and $Y \subseteq B \setminus A$, there exist subsets $U \subseteq A \setminus B$ and $V \subseteq B \setminus A$ such that $X\subseteq U$, $Y\subseteq V$, $A-U+V$ and $B+U-V$ are bases, and $|U|=|V|$ is at most the rank of $X+Y$. As an application, we prove the robustness of the local search algorithm for finding maximum weight matroid bases. For matroids representable over a field of characteristic zero, we further generalize our exchange property to include the very recent Equitability Theorem (SODA 2026), by establishing a far-reaching generalization of the Grassmann-Plücker identity.