Homomorphism-Homogeneous Partially Ordered Sets

Abstract

A structure is called homogeneous if every isomorphism between finite substructures of the structure extends to an automorphism of the structure. Recently, P. J. Cameron and J. Nešetřil introduced a relaxed version of homogeneity: we say that a structure is homomorphism-homogeneous if every homomorphism between finite substructures of the structure extends to an endomorphism of the structure. In this paper we characterize homomorphism-homogeneous partially ordered sets (where a homomorphism between partially ordered sets A and B is a mapping f : A →B satisfying $x \leqslant y \Rightarrow f{\left( x \right)} \leqslant f{\left( y \right)}$). We show that there are five types of homomorphism-homogeneous partially ordered sets: partially ordered sets whose connected components are chains; trees; dual trees; partially ordered sets which split into a tree and a dual tree; and X ₅-dense locally bounded partially ordered sets.