Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
A subset F of an ordered set X is a fibre of X if F intersects every maximal antichain of X. We find a lower bound on the function ƒ (D), the minimum fibre size in the distributive lattice D, in terms of the size of D. In particular, we prove that there is a constant c such that In the process we show that minimum fibre size is a monotone property for a certain class of distributive lattices. This fact depends upon being able to split every maximal antichain of this class of distributive lattices into two parts so that the lattice is the union of the upset of one part and the downset of the other.