Sharply transitive posets with free abelian automorphism group

Abstract

Let (X,≤) be a partially ordered set (in short, a poset). The automorphism group Aut (X,≤) is the group of all permutations g of X such that x ≤ y if and only if xg ≤ yg for all x,y∈X. We say that (X,≤) is sharply transitive if Aut(X,≤) is sharply transitive on X, that is, for x,y∈X there exists a unique g∈Aut(X,≤) with y = xg. Sharply transitive totally ordered sets have been studied by Ohkuma[4, 5], Glass, Gurevich, Holland and Shelah [3] (see also [2] and [6]). Whereas the only countable sharply transitive totally ordered set is the set of integers, there are a great variety of countable sharply transitive posets. Amongst other results, in [1] the author showed that there are countably many non-isomorphic sharply transitive posets whose automorphism group is infinite cyclic (and also gave a full description of those), whereas there are 2N0 non-isomorphic sharply transitive posets whose automorphism group is isomorphic to the additive group of the rational numbers. This suggests also that one should consider the analogous problem for free abelian groups. The purpose of this note is to show that whenever G is a countable free abelian group then there exists a sharply transitive poset whose automorphism group is isomorphic to G, and that there are already 2N0 non-isomorphic sharply transitive posets whose automorphism group is the free abelian group of rank 2.