Exponents of Jacobians of Graphs and Regular Matroids

Abstract

Let $G$ be a finite undirected multigraph with no self-loops. The Jacobian $\mathrm{Jac}(G)$ is a finite abelian group associated with $G$ whose cardinality is equal to the number of spanning trees of $G$. There are only a finite number of biconnected graphs $G$ such that the exponent of $\mathrm{Jac}(G)$ equals $2$ or $3$. The definition of a Jacobian can also be extended to regular matroids as a generalization of graphs. We prove that there are finitely many connected regular matroids $M$ such that $\mathrm{Jac}(M)$ has exponent $2$ and characterize all such matroids.