Induced betweenness in order-theoretic trees
Abstract
The ternary relation of betweenness states that an element is between the elements and , in some sense depending on the considered structure. In a partially ordered set , . The corresponding betweenness structure is . The class of betweenness structures of linear orders is first-order definable. That of partial orders is monadic second-order definable. An order-theoretic tree is a partial order such that the set of elements larger that any element is linearly ordered and any two elements have an upper-bound. Finite or infinite rooted trees ordered by the ancestor relation are order-theoretic trees. In an order-theoretic tree, we define to mean that or or or provided the least upper-bound of and is defined when and are incomparable. In a previous article, we established that the corresponding class of betweenness structures is monadic second-order definable.We prove here that the induced substructures of the betweenness structures of the countable order-theoretic trees form a monadic second-order definable class, denoted by IBO. The proof uses a variant of cographs, the partitioned probe cographs, and their known six finite minimal excluded induced subgraphs called the bounds of the class. This proof links two apparently unrelated topics: cographs and order-theoretic trees.However, the class IBO has finitely many bounds, i.e., minimal excluded finite induced substructures. Hence it is first-order definable. The proof of finiteness uses well-quasi-orders and does not provide the finite list of bounds. Hence, the associated first-order defining sentence is not known.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2111.15357,
title = {Induced betweenness in order-theoretic trees},
author = {Bruno Courcelle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.15357},
year = {2021}
}