Normalized matching property of the subgroup lattice of an abelian \(p\)-group (Q1850034)

A graded poset \(P\) is said to be strongly Sperner if, for all \(k\), the cardinality of a subset of \(P\), not containing a chain of \(k+1\) elements, does not exceed the cardinality of the union of the \(k\) largest ranks of \(P\). Let \(R_i\) denote the \(i\)th rank of \(P\), and, for \(A\subseteq R_i\), let \(\nabla (A)= \{b\in R_{i+1}: b\geq a\) for some \(a\in A\}\). Then \(P\) has the normalized matching property if \(|\nabla (A)|/ |A|\geq |R_{i+1} |/ |R_i|\) for all \(A\subseteq R_i\), \(0\leq i<r(P)\). It was proved by \textit{J. Wang} and \textit{Y. Wang} [Sci. China, Ser. A 43, 693-702 (2000; Zbl 0970.06005)] that the lattice \(L_{k^n}(p)\) of subgroups of the abelian \(p\)-group \((\mathbb{Z}/p^k \mathbb{Z})^n\), is strongly Sperner for all sufficiently large primes \(p\). It is now shown that, for sufficiently large \(p\), it has the normalized matching property, a stronger result which implies the symmetric chain property as well as the strong Sperner property.