On the number of join-irreducibles in a congruence representation of a finite distributive lattice

For a finite lattice L, let $ \trianglelefteq_L $ denote the reflexive and transitive closure of the join-dependency relation on L, defined on the set J(L) of all join-irreducible elements of L. We characterize the relations of the form $ \trianglelefteq_L $, as follows: Theorem. Let $ \trianglelefteq $ be a quasi-ordering on a finite set P. Then the following conditions are equivalent:(i) There exists a finite lattice L such that $ \langle J(L), \trianglelefteq_L $ is isomorphic to the quasi-ordered set $ \langle P, \trianglelefteq \rangle $.(ii) $ |\{x\in P|p \trianglelefteq x\}| \neq 2 $, for any $ p \in P $.For a finite lattice L, let $ \mathrm{je}(L) = |J(L)|-|J(\mathrm{Con} L)| $ where Con L is the congruence lattice of L. It is well-known that the inequality $ \mathrm{je}(L) \geq 0 $ holds. For a finite distributive lattice D, let us define the join- excess function:$ \mathrm{JE}(D) =\mathrm{min(je} (L) | \mathrm{Con} L \cong D). $We provide a formula for computing the join-excess function of a finite distributive lattice D. This formula implies that $ \mathrm{JE}(D) \leq (2/3)| \mathrm{J}(D)|$ , for any finite distributive lattice D; the constant 2/3 is best possible.A special case of this formula gives a characterization of congruence lattices of finite lower bounded lattices.Dedicated to the memory of Gian-Carlo Rota