Irreducible disjoint covering systems (with an application to Boolean algebra) (Q805651): Difference between revisions

The authors further develop their lattice geometry approach to the algebra of cosets, namely the part corresponding to irreducible disjoint covering systems of cosets. Here a family \(\{a_ i(n_ i)\); \(1\leq i\leq t\}\) of cosets is called a disjoint covering system (DCS) if it forms a partition of the set of all integers. It is called irreducible if the union of none of its proper subfamilies forms a single coset (possibly 0(1)). The main result of the paper says that if \(\{a_ i(n_ i)\); \(1\leq i\leq t\}\) is an irreducible DCS and \(m=l.c.m.(n_ i;1\leq i\leq t)\) has the prime factors \(p(m)=p_ 1<p_ 2<p_ 3<...<p_{\ell}=P(m)\) then \[ (i)\quad t\geq \max_{1\leq i\leq t}\lambda (n_ i)+(p(m)- 1)P(m);\quad (ii)\quad t\geq \max_{1\leq i\leq t}\lambda (n_ i)+(p_ 1+p_ 2+p_ 3-5), \] where \(\lambda (n)=1+\sum^{k}_{j+1}\alpha_ j(q_ j-1)\) if n has the prime factorization \(n=\prod^{k}_{j=1}q_ j^{\alpha_ j}.\) As a special application to Boolean algebra an improvement of a lower bound for the number of clauses in certain irreducible tautologies is given.