CS2006 Discrete Structures : Partially ordered sets / Sudeep K S

Lecture notes, Dilworths Theorem

Minimum number of chains in a chain decomposition of a poset X (partition of elements of

chains) is equal to the maximum number of elements in anti-chain of X .

X into

Proof: Consider the bipartite graph built from the partially ordered set X , with two copies aL and aR
for every element a X , with an edge between aL and bR if a b and a 6= b.
By Konigs Theorem, we have a vertex cover C and a matching M of same size m in this bipartite graph.
Consider the set A of elements of X not in C . If X has n elements, this element has size at least n m.
This is an anti-chain (Otherwise, for two elements a and b in A, either a b or b a, and the edge
between them is not covered by C .)
Build a family of chains as follows : Start with n chains, where every element a X belongs to a distict
group. For each edge (aL , bR ) in M , join the groups containing a and b (take a union of those two groups).
Note that each edge brings the number of groups down by one. So by the time all m edges of the matching
M are considered, we are left with exactly n m groups. Each of these groups is a chain. (Easy to verify
: It is a sequence of matching edges that places two different elements a and b in the same set, so either
a b or b a.)).
Now we have a partition of elements of
elements.

X into n m chains, and an anti-chain A with at least n m

Claim : If there is an anti-chain of size k , any partition into chains will have at least k chains. (Proof:
Two elements in an anti-chain are not comparable. So each element in the anti-chain has to go to a different
chain.)
The above claim means that A has exactly n m elements, and it is a maximum anti-chain. (No
anti-chain can have elements more than n m, as we have a partition of X into chains, with that many
chains.) It also implies that this is the minimum number of chains in any chain decomposition of X .