Generalizing semidistributivity

A latticeL is called congruence normal if it can be generated by doubling of convex sets starting with the one-element lattice. In the special case of intervals, the lattice is called bounded. It has been proven thatL is bounded if and only ifL is congruence normal and semidistributive.In this paper we study the connection between certain classes of convex sets and generalized semidistributive laws. These so-called doubling classes are pseudovarieties which can be described by implications as well as by forbiden substructures. In the end, we examine the structure of the lattice of all doubling classes.     

Primes,irreducibles and extremal lattices

This paper studies certain types of join and meet-irreducibles called coprimes and primes. These elements can be used to characterize certain types of lattices. For example, a lattice is distributive if and only if every join-irreducible is coprime. Similarly, a lattice is meet-pseudocomplemented if and only if each atom is coprime. Furthermore, these elements naturally decompose lattices into sublattices so that often properties of the original lattice can be deduced from properties of the sublattice. Not every lattice has primes and coprimes. This paper shows that lattices which are long enough must have primes and coprimes and that these elements and the resulting decompositions can be used to study such lattices.The length of every finite lattice is bounded above by the minimum of the number of meet-irreducibles (meet-rank) and the number of join-irreducibles (join-rank) that it has. This paper studies lattices for which length=join-rank or length=meet-rank. These are called p-extremal lattices and they have interesting decompositions and properties. For example, ranked, p-extremal lattices are either lower locally distributive (join-rank=length), upper locally distributive (meet-rank=length) or distributive (join-rank=meet-rank=length). In the absence of the Jordan-Dedekind chain condition, p-extremal lattices still have many interesting properties. Of special interest are the lattices that satisfy both equalities. Such lattices are called extremal; this class includes distributive lattices and the associativity lattices of Tamari. Even though they have interesting decompositions, extremal lattices cannot be characterized algebraically since any finite lattice can be embedded as a subinterval into an extremal lattice. This paper shows how prime and coprime elements, and the poset of irreducibles can be used to analyze p-extremal and other types of lattices.The results presented in this paper are used to deduce many key properties of the Tamari lattices. These lattices behave much like distributive lattices even though they violate the Jordan-Dedekind chain condition very strongly having maximal chains that vary in length from N-1 to N(N-1)/2 where N is a parameter used in the construction of these lattices.     

Sublattices of complete lattices with continuity conditions

Various embedding problems of lattices into complete lattices are solved. We prove that for any join-semilattice S with the minimal join-cover refinement property, the ideal lattice Id S of S is both algebraic and dually algebraic. Furthermore, if there are no infinite D-sequences in J(S), then Id S can be embedded into a direct product of finite lower bounded lattices. We also find a system of infinitary identities that characterize sublattices of complete, lower continuous, and join-semidistributive lattices. These conditions are satisfied by any (not necessarily finitely generated) lower bounded lattice and by any locally finite, join-semidistributive lattice. Furthermore, they imply M. Erné’s dual staircase distributivity.On the other hand, we prove that the subspace lattice of any infinite-dimensional vector space cannot be embedded into any ℵ₀-complete, ℵ₀-upper continuous, and ℵ₀-lower continuous lattice. A similar result holds for the lattice of all order-convex subsets of any infinite chain.Dedicated to the memory of Ivan RivalReceived April 4, 2003; accepted in final form June 16, 2004.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Reflections on lower bounded lattices

Lattices in the variety of lower bounded lattices of rank k are characterized. A sufficient condition for a lattice to be lower bounded is given, and used to produce a new example of a non-finitely-generated lower bounded lattice. Lattices that are subdirect products of finite lower bounded lattices are characterized.In memory of Ivan RivalReceived September 18, 2003; accepted in final form October 5, 2004.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Congruence lattices of function lattices

Thefunction lattice L ^P is the lattice of all isotone maps from a posetP into a latticeL.D. Duffus, B. Jónsson, and I. Rival proved in 1978 that for afinite poset P, the congruence lattice ofL ^P is a direct power of the congruence lattice ofL; the exponent is |P|.This result fails for infiniteP. However, utilizing a generalization of theL ^P construction, theL[D] construction (the extension ofL byD, whereD is a bounded distributive lattice), the second author proved in 1979 that ConL[D] is isomorphic to (ConL) [ConD] for afinite lattice L.In this paper we prove that the isomorphism ConL[D](ConL)[ConD] holds for a latticeL and a bounded distributive latticeD iff either ConL orD is finite.The research of the first author was supported by the NSERC of Canada.The research of the second author was supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research, under Grant No. 1903.     

Freely adjoining a relative complement to a lattice

Let K be a lattice, and let a < b < c be elements of K. We adjoin freely a relative complement u of b in [a, c] to K to form the lattice L. For two polynomials A and B over K ∪ {u}, we find a very simple set of conditions under which A and B represent the same element in L, so that in L all pairs of relative complements in [a, c] can be described. Our major result easily follows: Let [a, c] be an interval of a lattice K; let us assume that every element in [a, c] has at most one relative complement. Then K has an extension L such that [a, c] in L, as a lattice, is uniquely complemented.As an immediate consequence, we get the classical result of R. P. Dilworth: Every lattice can be embedded into a uniquely complemented lattice. We also get the stronger form due to C. C. Chen and G. Grätzer: Every at most uniquely complemented bounded lattice has a {0, 1}-embedding into a uniquely complemented lattice. Some stronger forms of these results are also presented.A polynomial A over K ∪ {u} naturally represents an element 〈A 〉 of L. Let us call a polynomial A minimal, if it is of minimal length representing x. We characterize minimal polynomials.Dedicated to the memory of Ivan RivalReceived February 12, 2003; accepted in final form June 18, 2004.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Small sublattices with large dominions

Two examples of finite sublattices with infinite dominions are given. It is proven that this cannot occur in a finitely generated lattice variety. Received May 10, 2001; accepted in final form October 6, 2005.     

Cambrian lattices

For an arbitrary finite Coxeter group W, we define the family of Cambrian lattices for W as quotients of the weak order on W with respect to certain lattice congruences. We associate to each Cambrian lattice a complete fan, which we conjecture is the normal fan of a polytope combinatorially isomorphic to the generalized associahedron for W. In types A and B we obtain, by means of a fiber-polytope construction, combinatorial realizations of the Cambrian lattices in terms of triangulations and in terms of permutations. Using this combinatorial information, we prove in types A and B that the Cambrian fans are combinatorially isomorphic to the normal fans of the generalized associahedra and that one of the Cambrian fans is linearly isomorphic to Fomin and Zelevinsky's construction of the normal fan as a “cluster fan.” Our construction does not require a crystallographic Coxeter group and therefore suggests a definition, at least on the level of cellular spheres, of a generalized associahedron for any finite Coxeter group. The Tamari lattice is one of the Cambrian lattices of type A, and two “Tamari” lattices in type B are identified and characterized in terms of signed pattern avoidance. We also show that open intervals in Cambrian lattices are either contractible or homotopy equivalent to spheres.     

Sublattices of product spaces: Hulls, representations and counting

The Cartesian product of lattices is a lattice, called a product space, with componentwise meet and join operations. A sublattice of a lattice L is a subset closed for the join and meet operations of L. The sublattice hullLQ of a subset Q of a lattice is the smallest sublattice containing Q. We consider two types of representations of sublattices and sublattice hulls in product spaces: representation by projections and representation with proper boundary epigraphs. We give sufficient conditions, on the dimension of the product space and/or on the sublattice hull of a subset Q, for LQ to be entirely defined by the sublattice hulls of the two-dimensional projections of Q. This extends results of Topkis (1978) and of Veinott [Representation of general and polyhedral subsemilattices and sublattices of product spaces, Linear Algebra Appl. 114/115 (1989) 681-704]. We give similar sufficient conditions for the sublattice hull LQ to be representable using the epigraphs of certain isotone (i.e., nondecreasing) functions defined on the one-dimensional projections of Q. This also extends results of Topkis and Veinott. Using this representation we show that LQ is convex when Q is a convex subset in a vector lattice (Riesz space), and is a polyhedron when Q is a polyhedron in Rⁿ.We consider in greater detail the case of a finite product of finite chains (i.e., totally ordered sets). We use the representation with proper boundary epigraphs and provide upper and lower bounds on the number of sublattices, giving a partial answer to a problem posed by Birkhoff in 1937. These bounds are close to each other in a logarithmic sense. We define a corner representation of isotone functions and use it in conjunction with the representation with proper boundary epigraphs to define an encoding of sublattices. We show that this encoding is optimal (up to a constant factor) in terms of memory space. We also consider the sublattice hull membership problem of deciding whether a given point is in the sublattice hull LQ of a given subset Q. We present a good characterization and a polynomial time algorithm for this sublattice hull membership problem. We construct in polynomial time a data structure for the representation with proper boundary epigraphs, such that sublattice hull membership queries may be answered in time logarithmic in the size |Q| of the given subset.     

Matchings and radon transforms in lattices. I. Consistent lattices

An element in a lattice is join-irreducible if x=ab implies x=a or x=b. A meet-irreducible is a join-irreducible in the order dual. A lattice is consistent if for every element x and every join-irreducible j, the element xj is a join-irreducible in the upper interval [x, î]. We prove that in a finite consistent lattice, the incidence matrix of meet-irreducibles versus join-irreducibles has rank the number of join-irreducibles. Since modular lattices and their order duals are consistent, this settles a conjecture of Rival on matchings in modular lattices.     

Join-semidistributive lattices and convex geometries

We introduce the notion of a convex geometry extending the notion of a finite closure system with the anti-exchange property known in combinatorics. This notion becomes essential for the different embedding results in the class of join-semidistributive lattices. In particular, we prove that every finite join-semidistributive lattice can be embedded into a lattice S_P(A) of algebraic subsets of a suitable algebraic lattice A. This latter construction, S_P(A), is a key example of a convex geometry that plays an analogous role in hierarchy of join-semidistributive lattices as a lattice of equivalence relations does in the class of modular lattices. We give numerous examples of convex geometries that emerge in different branches of mathematics from geometry to graph theory. We also discuss the introduced notion of a strong convex geometry that might promise the development of rich structural theory of convex geometries.     

Finite modular congruence lattices

We consider the variety of modular lattices generated by all finite lattices obtained by gluing together some M₃’s. We prove that every finite lattice in this variety is the congruence lattice of a suitable finite algebra (in fact, of an operator group). Received February 26, 2004; accepted in final form December 16, 2004.     

Congruence-preserving extensions of finite lattices to sectionally complemented lattices

In 1962, the authors proved that every finite distributive lattice can be represented as the congruence lattice of a finite sectionally complemented lattice. In 1992, M. Tischendorf verified that every finite lattice has a congruence-preserving extension to an atomistic lattice. In this paper, we bring these two results together. We prove that every finite lattice has a congruence-preserving extension to a finite sectionally complemented lattice.

     

Identities of cofinal sublattices

If V is a variety of lattices and L a free lattice in V on uncountably many generators, then any cofinal sublattice of L generates all of V. On the other hand, any modular lattice without chains of order-type +1 has a cofinal distributive sublattice. More generally, if a modular lattice L has a distributive sublattice which is cofinal modulo intervals with ACC, this may be enlarged to a cofinal distributive sublattice. Examples are given showing that these existence results are sharp in several ways. Some similar results and questions on existence of cofinal sublattices with DCC are noted.This work was done while the first author was partly supported by NSF contract MCS 82-02632, and the second author by an NSF Graduate Fellowship.     

A note on essentially convex orders

In this note, we determine precisely which partially ordered sets (posets) have the property that, whenever they occur as subposets of a larger poset, they occur there convexly, i.e., as convex subposets. As a corollary, we also determine which lattices have the property that, if they occur as sublattices of a finite distributive lattice L, then they also occur as closed intervals in L. Throughout, all sets will be finite.Dedicated to the memory of Ivan RivalReceived May 5, 2003; accepted in final form October 3, 2004.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Permutahedra and generalized associahedra

Given a finite Coxeter system (W,S) and a Coxeter element c, or equivalently an orientation of the Coxeter graph of W, we construct a simple polytope whose outer normal fan is N. Reading's Cambrian fan Fc, settling a conjecture of Reading that this is possible. We call this polytope the c-generalized associahedron. Our approach generalizes Loday's realization of the associahedron (a type A c-generalized associahedron whose outer normal fan is not the cluster fan but a coarsening of the Coxeter fan arising from the Tamari lattice) to any finite Coxeter group. A crucial role in the construction is played by the c-singleton cones, the cones in the c-Cambrian fan which consist of a single maximal cone from the Coxeter fan.Moreover, if W is a Weyl group and the vertices of the permutahedron are chosen in a lattice associated to W, then we show that our realizations have integer coordinates in this lattice.     

On the lattice formed by all normal subloops of a finite loop

All normal subloops of a loopG form a modular latticeL _n (G). It is shown that a finite loopG has a complemented normal subloop lattice if and only ifG is a direct product of simple subloops. In particular,L _n (G) is a Boolean algebra if and only if no two isomorphic factors occurring in a decomposition ofG are abelian groups. The normal subloop lattice of a finite loop is a projective geometry if and only ifG is an elementary abelianp-group for some primep.     

A new formula for the volume of lattice polyhedra

LetL _n be the lattice consisting of all pointsx inR ^N such thatnx belongs to the fundamental latticeL ₁ of points with integer coordinates. When the vertices of a polyhedronP inR ^N are restricted to lie inL ₁ there is a formula which relates the volume ofP to the numbers of points ofL ₁,...,L _N in the interior and on the boundary ofP. The aim of this note is to show that the volume ofP can be determined only by means of the numbers of points ofL ₁,...,L _N lying in the interior ofP and cannot be expressed by the numbers of points ofL ₁,...,L _N lying on the boundary ofP. The latter numbers in turn can be used to compute to comopute the Euler characteristic of the boundary ofP.