Structure and enumeration of (3+1)-free posets (extended abstract)

Abstract

A poset is (3+1)-free if it does not contain the disjoint union of chains of length 3 and 1 as an induced subposet. These posets are the subject of the (3+1)-free conjecture of Stanley and Stembridge. Recently, Lewis and Zhang have enumerated \emph{graded} (3+1)-free posets, but until now the general enumeration problem has remained open. We enumerate all (3+1)-free posets by giving a decomposition into bipartite graphs, and obtain generating functions for (3+1)-free posets with labelled or unlabelled vertices.