Characterizing Combinatorial Geometries by Numerical Invariants

We show that the projective geometry PG(r − 1, q) for r > 3 is the only rank-r (combinatorial) geometry with (qr − 1)/(q − 1) points in which all lines have at least q + 1 points. For r = 3, these numerical invariants do not distinguish between projective planes of the same order, but they do distinguish projective planes from other rank-3 geometries. We give similar characterizations of affine geometries. In the core of the paper, we investigate the extent to which partition lattices and, more generally, Dowling lattices are characterized by similar information about their flats of small rank. We apply our results to characterizations of affine geometries, partition lattices, and Dowling lattices by Tutte polynomials, and to matroid reconstruction. In particular, we show that any matroid with the same Tutte polynomial as a Dowling lattice is a Dowling lattice.