Families that remain \(k\)-Sperner even after omitting an element of their ground set (Q1953417)

Summary: A family \(\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^{[n]}\) of sets is said to be \(l\)-trace \(k\)-Sperner if for any \(l\)-subset \(L \subset [n]\) the family \(\mathcal{F}|_L=\{F|_L:F \in \mathcal{F}\}=\{F \cap L: F \in \mathcal{F}\}\) is \(k\)-Sperner, i.e. does not contain any chain of length \(k+1\). The maximum size that an \(l\)-trace \(k\)-Sperner family \(\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^{[n]}\) can have is denoted by \(f(n,k,l\). For pairs of integers \(l<k\), if in a family \(\mathcal{G}\) every pair of sets satisfies \(\bigl||G_1|-|G_2|\bigr| < k-l\), then \(\mathcal{G}\) possesses the \((n-l)\)-trace \(k\)-Sperner property. Among such families, the largest one is \(\mathcal{F}_0 = \{F\in 2^{[n]}: \lfloor \frac{n-(k-l)}{2}\rfloor+1 \leq |F| \leq \lfloor \frac{n-(k-l)}{2}\rfloor +k-l\}\) and also \(\mathcal{F}'_0=\{F\in 2^{[n]}: \lfloor \frac{n-(k-l)}{2}\rfloor \leq |F| \leq \lfloor \frac{n-(k-l)}{2}\rfloor +k-l-1\}\) if \(n-(k-l)\) is even. In an earlier paper, we proved that this is asymptotically optimal for all pair of integers \(l<k\), i.e., \(f(n,k,n-l)=(1+o(1))|\mathcal{F}_0|\). In this paper we consider the case when \(l=1, k\geq 2\), and prove that \(f(n,k,n-1) = |\mathcal{F}_0|\) provided \(n\) is large enough. We also prove that the unique \((n-1)\)-trace \(k\)-Sperner family with size \(f(n,k,n-1)\) is \(\mathcal{F}_0\) and also \(\mathcal{F}'_0\) when \(n+k\) is odd.