Decompositions of the Boolean Lattice into Rank-symmetric Chains

The Boolean lattice 2[n] is the power set of [n] ordered by inclusion. A chain c0 ⊂ · · · ⊂ ck in 2[n] is rank-symmetric, if |ci|+ |ck−i| = n for i = 0, . . . , k; and it is symmetric, if |ci| = (n− k)/2 + i. We prove that there exist a bijection p : [n] → [n] and a partial ordering < on [n](>n/2) satisfying the following properties: • ⊂ is an extension of < on [n](>n/2); • if C ⊂ [n](>n/2) is a chain with respect to <, then p(C)∪C is a rank-symmetric chain in 2[n], where p(C) = {p(x) : x ∈ C}; • the poset ([n](>n/2), <) has the so called normalized matching property. We show two applications of this result. A conjecture of Füredi asks if 2[n] can be partitioned into ( n bn/2c ) chains such that the size of any two chains differ by at most 1. We prove an asymptotic version of this conjecture with the additional condition that every chain in the partition is rank-symmetric: 2[n] can be partitioned into ( n bn/2c ) rank-symmetric chains, each of size Θ( √ n). Our second application gives a lower bound for the number of symmetric chain partitions of 2[n]. We show that 2[n] has at least 2Ω(2n logn/ √ n) symmetric chain partitions.