Planar posets have dimension at most linear in their height

We prove that every planar poset $P$ of height $h$ has dimension at most $192h + 96$. This improves on previous exponential bounds and is best possible up to a constant factor. We complement this result with a construction of planar posets of height $h$ and dimension at least $(4/3)h-2$.Comment: v2: Minor change

Tree-width and dimension

Over the last 30 years, researchers have investigated connections between dimension for posets and planarity for graphs. Here we extend this line of research to the structural graph theory parameter tree-width by proving that the dimension of a finite poset is bounded in terms of its height and the tree-width of its cover graph.Comment: Updates on solutions of problems and on bibliograph

Nowhere Dense Graph Classes and Dimension

Nowhere dense graph classes provide one of the least restrictive notions of sparsity for graphs. Several equivalent characterizations of nowhere dense classes have been obtained over the years, using a wide range of combinatorial objects. In this paper we establish a new characterization of nowhere dense classes, in terms of poset dimension: A monotone graph class is nowhere dense if and only if for every $h \geq 1$ and every $\epsilon > 0$, posets of height at most $h$ with $n$ elements and whose cover graphs are in the class have dimension $\mathcal{O}(n^{\epsilon})$.Comment: v4: Minor changes suggested by a refere

Dimension of posets with planar cover graphs excluding two long incomparable chains

It has been known for more than 40 years that there are posets with planar cover graphs and arbitrarily large dimension. Recently, Streib and Trotter proved that such posets must have large height. In fact, all known constructions of such posets have two large disjoint chains with all points in one chain incomparable with all points in the other. Gutowski and Krawczyk conjectured that this feature is necessary. More formally, they conjectured that for every $k\geq 1$, there is a constant $d$ such that if $P$ is a poset with a planar cover graph and $P$ excludes $\mathbf{k}+\mathbf{k}$, then $\dim(P)\leq d$. We settle their conjecture in the affirmative. We also discuss possibilities of generalizing the result by relaxing the condition that the cover graph is planar.Comment: New section on connections with graph minors, small correction

Minors and dimension

It has been known for 30 years that posets with bounded height and with cover graphs of bounded maximum degree have bounded dimension. Recently, Streib and Trotter proved that dimension is bounded for posets with bounded height and planar cover graphs, and Joret et al. proved that dimension is bounded for posets with bounded height and with cover graphs of bounded tree-width. In this paper, it is proved that posets of bounded height whose cover graphs exclude a fixed topological minor have bounded dimension. This generalizes all the aforementioned results and verifies a conjecture of Joret et al. The proof relies on the Robertson-Seymour and Grohe-Marx graph structure theorems.Comment: Updated reference

The Queue-Number of Posets of Bounded Width or Height

Heath and Pemmaraju conjectured that the queue-number of a poset is bounded by its width and if the poset is planar then also by its height. We show that there are planar posets whose queue-number is larger than their height, refuting the second conjecture. On the other hand, we show that any poset of width $2$ has queue-number at most $2$, thus confirming the first conjecture in the first non-trivial case. Moreover, we improve the previously best known bounds and show that planar posets of width $w$ have queue-number at most $3w-2$ while any planar poset with $0$ and $1$ has queue-number at most its width.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

Topological minors of cover graphs and dimension

We show that posets of bounded height whose cover graphs exclude a fixed graph as a topological minor have bounded dimension. This result was already proven by Walczak. However, our argument is entirely combinatorial and does not rely on structural decomposition theorems. Given a poset with large dimension but bounded height, we directly find a large clique subdivision in its cover graph. Therefore, our proof is accessible to readers not familiar with topological graph theory, and it allows us to provide explicit upper bounds on the dimension. With the introduced tools we show a second result that is supporting a conjectured generalization of the previous result. We prove that $(k+k)$-free posets whose cover graphs exclude a fixed graph as a topological minor contain only standard examples of size bounded in terms of $k$.Comment: revised versio