Large Sets of Lattices without Order Embeddings

Abstract

Let I and μ be an infinite index set and a cardinal, respectively, such that |I| ≤ μ and, starting from ℵ0, μ can be constructed in countably many steps by passing from a cardinal λ to 2λ at successor ordinals and forming suprema at limit ordinals. We prove that there exists a system X = {Li: i ∈ I} of complemented lattices of cardinalities less than |I| such that if i, j ∈ I and φ: Li → Lj is an order embedding, then i = j and φ is the identity map of Li. If |I| is countable, then, in addition, X consists of finite lattices of length 10. Stating the main result in other words, we prove that the category of (complemented) lattices with order embeddings has a discrete full subcategory with |I| many objects. Still in other words, the class of these lattices has large antichains (that is, antichains of size |I|) with respect to the quasiorder “embeddability.” As corollaries, we trivially obtain analogous statements for partially ordered sets and semilattices.