Paper 2, Section II, G
Explain what is meant by a chain-complete poset. State the Bourbaki-Witt fixedpoint theorem for such posets.
A poset is called directed if every finite subset of (including the empty subset) has an upper bound in is called directed-complete if every subset of which is directed (in the induced ordering) has a least upper bound in . Show that the set of all chains in an arbitrary poset , ordered by inclusion, is directed-complete.
Given a poset , let denote the set of all order-preserving maps , ordered pointwise (i.e. if and only if for all ). Show that is directed-complete if is.
Now suppose is directed-complete, and that is order-preserving and inflationary. Show that there is a unique smallest set satisfying
(a) ;
(b) is closed under composition (i.e. ); and
(c) is closed under joins of directed subsets.
Show that
(i) all maps in are inflationary;
(ii) is directed;
(iii) if , then all values of are fixed points of ;
(iv) for every , there exists with .