Lattice diagrams with few slopes (Q2641322)

The paper studies the ways of drawing Hasse diagrams of lattices in the plane. If in a lattice the element a is greater than b, then the circle denoting a in the diagram is drawn in the plane higher than that denoting b. If a covers b, then these circles are joined by a straight line segment. It is required to draw the diagrams in such a way that the number of different slopes of such segments might be as small as possible. A lower (or upper) cover of an element a is an element x such that \(x<a\) (or \(x>a\), respectively) and there exists no element between a and x. The main result of the paper states that for any integer \(n>2\) there exists a lattice L in which each vertex has at most n lower covers and at most n upper covers and whose Hasse diagram cannot be drawn by using at most n different slopes.