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Concept
Interval order
Summary
In mathematics, especially order theory,
the interval order for a collection of intervals on the real line
is the partial order corresponding to their left-to-right precedence relation—one interval, I1, being considered less than another, I2, if I1 is completely to the left of I2.
More formally, a countable poset is an interval order if and only if
there exists a bijection from to a set of real intervals,
so ,
such that for any we have
in exactly when .
Such posets may be equivalently
characterized as those with no induced subposet isomorphic to the
pair of two-element chains, in other words as the -free posets
Fully written out, this means that for any two pairs of elements and one must have or .
The subclass of interval orders obtained by restricting the intervals to those of unit length, so they all have the form , is precisely the semiorders.
The complement of the comparability graph of an interval order (, ≤)
is the interval graph .
Interval orders should not be confused with the interval-containment orders, which are the inclusion orders on intervals on the real line (equivalently, the orders of dimension ≤ 2).
An important parameter of partial orders is order dimension: the dimension of a partial order is the least number of linear orders whose intersection is . For interval orders, dimension can be arbitrarily large. And while the problem of determining the dimension of general partial orders is known to be NP-hard, determining the dimension of an interval order remains a problem of unknown computational complexity.
A related parameter is interval dimension, which is defined analogously, but in terms of interval orders instead of linear orders. Thus, the interval dimension of a partially ordered set is the least integer for which there exist interval orders on with exactly when and .
The interval dimension of an order is never greater than its order dimension.
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