English

Saturation for Sums of Posets and Antichains

Combinatorics 2025-09-15 v1

Abstract

Given a finite poset P\mathcal P, we say that a family F\mathcal F of subsets of [n][n] is P\mathcal P-saturated if F\mathcal F does not contain an induced copy of P\mathcal P, but adding any other set to F\mathcal F creates an induced copy of P\mathcal P. The saturation number of P\mathcal P is the size of the smallest P\mathcal P-saturated family with ground set [n][n]. The saturation numbers have been shown to exhibit a dichotomy: for any poset, the saturation number is either bounded, or at least 2n2\sqrt n. The general conjecture is that in fact, the saturation number for any poset is either bounded, or at least linear. The linear sum of two posets P1\mathcal P_1 and P2\mathcal P_2, dented by P1P2\mathcal P_1*\mathcal P_2, is defined as the poset obtained from a copy of P1\mathcal P_1 placed completely on top of a copy of P2\mathcal P_2. In this paper we show that the saturation number of P1AkP2\mathcal P_1*\mathcal A_k*\mathcal P_2 is always at least linear, for any P1\mathcal P_1, P2\mathcal P_2 and k2k\geq2, where Ak\mathcal A_k is the antichain of size kk. This is a generalisation of the recent result that the saturation number for the diamond is linear (in that case P1\mathcal P_1 and P2\mathcal P_2 are both the single point poset, and k=2k=2). We also show that, with the exception of chains which are known to have bounded saturation number, the saturation number for all complete multipartite posets is linear.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.10294,
  title  = {Saturation for Sums of Posets and Antichains},
  author = {Maria-Romina Ivan and Sean Jaffe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.10294},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages, 4 figures