Maximal and Minimal Semilattices on Ordered Sets

The map which takes an element of an ordered set to its principal ideal is a natural embedding of that ordered set into its powerset, a semilattice. If attention is restricted to all finite intersections of the principal ideals of the original ordered set, then an embedding into a much smaller semilattice is obtained. In this paper the question is answered of when this construction is, in a certain arrow-theoretic sense, minimal. Specifically, a characterisation is given, in terms of ideals and filters, of those ordered sets which admit a so-called minimal embedding into a semilattice. Similarly, a candidate maximal semilattice on an ordered set can be constructed from the principal filters of its elements. A characterisation of those ordered sets that extend to a maximal semilattice is given. Finally, the notion of a free semilattice on an ordered set is given, and it is shown that the candidate maximal semilattice in the embedding-theoretic sense is the free object.