Irreducible Posets with Large Height Exist

The dimension of a poset (X, P) is the minimum number of linear extensions of P whose intersection is P. A poset is irreducible if the removal of any point lowers the dimension. If A is an antichain in X and X A # B’, then dim X < 2 width (X A) + 1. We construct examples to show that this inequality is best possible; these examples prove the existence of irreducible posets of arbitrarily large height. Although many infinite families of irreducible posets are known, no explicity constructed irreducible poset of height larger than four has been found.