Height of a Superposition

Abstract

We observe that, given a poset ${\left( {E,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}} \right)}$ and a finite covering ${\user1{\mathcal{R}}} = {\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{1} \cup \cdots \cup {\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{n}$ of its ordering, the height of the poset does not exceed the natural product of the heights of the corresponding sub-relations:

$$\mathfrak{h}{\left( {E,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}} \right)} \leqslant \mathfrak{h}{\left( {E,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{1} } \right)} \otimes \cdots \otimes \mathfrak{h}{\left( {E,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{n} } \right)}.$$

Conversely for every finite sequence $(\xi_1,\cdots,\xi_n)$ of ordinals, every poset ${\left( {E,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}} \right)}$ of height at most $\xi_1\otimes\cdots\otimes\xi_n$ admits a partition ${\left( {{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{1} , \cdots ,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{n} } \right)}$ of its ordering ${\user1{\mathcal{R}}}$ such that each ${\left( {E,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{k} } \right)}$ has height at most $\xi_k$. In particular for every finite sequence $(\xi_1,\cdots,\xi_n)$ of ordinals, the ordinal

$$\xi _{1} \underline{ \otimes } \cdots \underline{ \otimes } \xi _{n} : = \sup {\left\{ {{\left( {\xi ^{\prime }_{1} \otimes \cdots \otimes \xi ^{\prime }_{n} } \right)} + 1:\xi ^{\prime }_{1} < \xi _{1} , \cdots ,\xi ^{\prime }_{n} < \xi _{n} } \right\}}$$

is the least $\xi$ for which the following partition relation holds

$$\mathfrak{H}_{\xi } \to {\left( {\mathfrak{H}_{{\xi _{1} }} , \cdots ,\mathfrak{H}_{{\xi _{n} }} } \right)}^{2} $$

meaning: for every poset ${\left( {A,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}} \right)}$ of height at least $\xi$ and every finite covering ${\left( {{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{1} , \cdots ,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{n} } \right)}$ of its ordering ${\user1{\mathcal{R}}}$, there is a $k$ for which the relation ${\left( {A,{\user1{\mathcal{R}}}_{k} } \right)}$ has height at least $\xi_k$. The proof will rely on analogue properties of vertex coverings w.r.t. the natural sum.