Retracts of posets: The chain-gap property and the selection property are independent (Q998787)

Let \(P\) be a partially ordered set. A pair \((A,B)\) of subsets of \(P\) is called a gap if it is a pre-gap (i.e. \(A\subseteq L(B)\)) and \(U(A)\cap L(B)=\emptyset\). A pre-gap is separable if \(U(A)\cap L(B)\not =\emptyset\). A poset \(P\) has the selection property if for each separable pre-gap of \(P\) one can select an element of \(P\) separating the pre-gap such that the overall selection preserves the order on these pre-gaps. \(P\) has the chain-gap property if each gap can be mapped into a gap within a chain in an order-preserving fashion. \textit{I. Rival} and \textit{R. Wille} characterized in [Discrete Math. 35, 203--212 (1981; Zbl 0467.06002)] members of the order variety generated by the class of chains as posets satisfying both the selection property and the chain-gap property. Moreover, they gave examples of lattices with the selection property which fail the chain-gap property, and they constructed a lattice \(P(\omega_{1})/\)Fin that does not have the selection property. They asked whether it has the chain-gap property. The authors answer this in the negative (Theorem 1.1) and get a lattice \(L(S,\leq)\) generated by a sophisticated poset \((S,\leq)\) which has the chain-gap property but not the selection property (Theorem 1.2). The proofs of these theorems make up most of the paper.