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In mathematics, in the areas of order theory and combinatorics, Dilworth's theorem characterizes the width of any finite partially ordered set in terms of a partition of the order into a minimum number of chains. It is named for the mathematician . An antichain in a partially ordered set is a set of elements no two of which are comparable to each other, and a chain is a set of elements every two of which are comparable. Dilworth's theorem states that there exists an antichain ''A'', and a partition of the order into a family ''P'' of chains, such that the number of chains in the partition equals the cardinality of ''A''. When this occurs, ''A'' must be the largest antichain in the order, for any antichain can have at most one element from each member of ''P''. Similarly, ''P'' must be the smallest family of chains into which the order can be partitioned, for any partition into chains must have at least one chain per element of ''A''. The width of the partial order is defined as the common size of ''A'' and ''P''. An equivalent way of stating Dilworth's theorem is that, in any finite partially ordered set, the maximum number of elements in any antichain equals the minimum number of chains in any partition of the set into chains. A version of the theorem for infinite partially ordered sets states that, in this case, a partially ordered set has finite width ''w'' if and only if it may be partitioned into ''w'' chains, but not less. == Inductive proof == The following proof by induction on the size of the partially ordered set is based on that of . Let be a finite partially ordered set. The theorem holds trivially if is empty. So, assume that has at least one element, and let be a maximal element of . By induction, we assume that for some integer the partially ordered set can be covered by disjoint chains and has at least one antichain of size . Clearly, for . For , let be the maximal element in that belongs to an antichain of size in , and set . We claim that is an antichain. Let be an antichain of size that contains . Fix arbitrary distinct indices and . Then . Let . Then , by the definition of . This implies that , since . By interchanging the roles of and in this argument we also have . This verifies that is an antichain. We now return to . Suppose first that for some . Let be the chain . Then by the choice of , does not have an antichain of size . Induction then implies that can be covered by disjoint chains since is an antichain of size in . Thus, can be covered by disjoint chains, as required. Next, if for each , then is an antichain of size in (since is maximal in ). Now can be covered by the chains , completing the proof. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dilworth's theorem」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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