English

The Saturation Number for the Diamond is Linear

Combinatorics 2026-03-10 v2

Abstract

For a fixed poset P\mathcal P we say that a family FP([n])\mathcal F\subseteq\mathcal P([n]) is P\mathcal P-saturated if it does not contain an induced copy of P\mathcal P, but whenever we add a new set to F\mathcal F, we form an induced copy of P\mathcal P. The size of the smallest such family is denoted by sat(n,P)\text{sat}^*(n, \mathcal P).\par For the diamond poset D2\mathcal D_2 (the two-dimensional Boolean lattice), while it is easy to see that the saturation number is at most n+1n+1, the best known lower bound has stayed at O(n)O(\sqrt n) since the introduction of the area of poset saturation. In this paper we prove that sat(n,D2)n+15\text{sat}^*(n, \mathcal D_2)\geq \frac{n+1}{5}, establishing that the saturation number for the diamond is linear. The proof uses a result about certain pairs of set systems.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.05122,
  title  = {The Saturation Number for the Diamond is Linear},
  author = {Maria-Romina Ivan and Sean Jaffe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.05122},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 12 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:49:43.123Z