English

Is the Symmetric Group Sperner?

Combinatorics 2019-01-07 v2

Abstract

An antichain A\mathcal{A} in a poset P\mathcal{P} is a subset of P\mathcal{P} in which no two elements are comparable. Sperner showed that the maximal antichain in the Boolean lattice, Bn={0<1}n\mathcal{B}_n = \left\{ 0 < 1 \right\}^n, is the largest rank (of size (nn/2)\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor}). This type of problem has been since generalized, and a graded poset P\mathcal{P} is said to be Sperner if the largest rank of P\mathcal{P} is its maximal antichain. In this paper, we will show that the symmetric group SnS_n, partially ordered by refinement (or equivalently by absolute order), is Sperner.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.00197,
  title  = {Is the Symmetric Group Sperner?},
  author = {Larry H. Harper and Gene B. Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.00197},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

7 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:00:54.957Z