Forbidden configurations for distributive, modular and semidistributive posets (Q738856)

A lattice is a poset (partially ordered set) in which any two elements \(a\), \(b\) have a unique supremum \(a\vee b\) and a unique infimum \(a\wedge b\). Many of the important classes of lattices have an alternative characterisation in terms of forbidden sub-lattices -- for example, distributive lattices (those for which \((a\wedge b)\vee c=(a\vee c)\wedge (b\vee c)\)) are precisely those lattices which do not contain the so-called diamond \(M_3\) or the pentagon \(M_5\) as a sub-lattice. There are similar classifications for some other important classes of lattices, such as semi-distributive, modular, semi-modular, etc. The main aim of the paper under review is to firstly reformulate these conditions for lattices in terms of comparability and incomparability. For example, a lattice \(L\) is modular if and only if for \(a,b,c\in L\) we have, using \(x\| y\) to denote \(x\) and \(y\) being incomparable, that \(a\| b\) and \(b\| c\) and \(b>c\) imply \(c\| b\wedge a\) or \(b\| a\vee c \). Again, many of the other classes of lattices admit a characterisation in terms of incomparability and comparaibilty. The paper extends many of these notions to general posets rather than just lattices and then uses these ideas to give forbidden sub-poset characterisations of posets. A key role is played by certain posets called \(LU\)-subposets and the notions of being (for example) \(\|\) distributive or \(\|\) modular which are the generalisations of distributive (respectively modular) from lattices to the more general posets. An example of the results proved is that a finite bounded poset is \(\|\) distributive if and only if every \(LU\) subposet of it is \(\|\) distributive.