A complete partial order abbreviated cpo can, depending on context, refer to any of the following concepts.
A partially ordered set is a directed-complete partial order if each of its directed subsets has a supremum. A subset of a partial order is directed if it is non-empty and every pair of elements has an upper bound in the subset. In the literature, dcpos sometimes also appear under the label up-complete poset.
A partially ordered set is a pointed directed-complete partial order if it is a dcpo with a least element. They are sometimes abbreviated cppos.
A partially ordered set is a ω-complete partial order if it is a poset in which every ω-chain has a supremum that belongs to the underlying set of the poset. Every dcpo is an ω-cpo, since every ω-chain is a directed set, but the converse is not true. However, every ω-cpo with a basis is also a dcpo. An ω-cpo with a basis is also called a continuous ω-cpo.
Note that complete partial order is never used to mean a poset in which all subsets have suprema; the terminology complete lattice is used for this concept. Requiring the existence of directed suprema can be motivated by viewing directed sets as generalized approximation sequences and suprema as limits of the respective computations. This intuition, in the context of denotational semantics, was the motivation behind the development of domain theory. The dual notion of a directed complete poset is called a filtered complete partial order. However, this concept occurs far less frequently in practice, since one usually can work on the dual order explicitly.
For any poset, the set of all non-empty filters, ordered by subset inclusion, is a dcpo. Together with the empty filter it is also pointed. If the order has binary meets, then this construction actually yields a complete lattice.
The set of all partial functions on some given set S can be ordered by defining f ≤ g for functions f and gif and only ifg extends f, i.e. if the domain of f is a subset of the domain of g and the values of f and g agree on all inputs for which both functions are defined. This order is a pointed dcpo, where the least element is the nowhere-defined function. In fact, ≤ is also bounded complete. This example also demonstrates why it is not always natural to have a greatest element.
Let us use the term “deductive system” as a set of sentences closed under consequence. There are interesting theorems that concern a set of deductive systems being a directed-complete partial ordering. Also, a set of deductive systems can be chosen to have a least element in a natural way, because the set of all consequences of the empty set is a deductive system contained by all deductive systems.
Properties
An ordered set P is a pointed dcpo if and only if every chain has a supremum in P, i.e., P is chain-complete. Alternatively, an ordered set P is a pointed dcpo if and only if every order-preserving self-map of P has a least fixpoint. Every set S can be turned into a pointed dcpo by adding a least element ⊥ and introducing a flat order with ⊥ ≤ s and s ≤ s for every s ∈ S and no other order relations.
A function f between two dcpos P and Q is called continuous if it maps directed sets to directed sets while preserving their suprema:
is directed for every directed.
for every directed.
Note that every continuous function between dcpos is a monotone function. This notion of continuity is equivalent to the topological continuity induced by the Scott topology. The set of all continuous functions between two dcpos P and Q is denoted . Equipped with the pointwise order, this is again a dcpo, and a cpo whenever Q is a cpo. Thus the complete partial orders with Scott-continuous maps form a cartesian closed category. Every order-preserving self-map f of a cpo has a least fixpoint. If f is continuous then this fixpoint is equal to the supremum of the iterates, f, … fn of ⊥.
