Tutte-polynomial distinguishability of series-parallel posets

Determine whether the Tutte polynomial distinguishes all series-parallel posets up to isomorphism.

Background

The paper studies whether the generalized interval polynomial uniquely identifies series-parallel posets and proves that it does. In contrasting this result with earlier work, the authors note that a strict subclass of series-parallel posets was previously shown to be distinguishable by the Tutte polynomial, while the corresponding question for the entire class remained unresolved.

This problem concerns whether the Tutte polynomial captures enough structural information to reconstruct every series-parallel poset, rather than only a restricted subclass.

References

Distinguishing SP posets has been investigated previously in the literature: in it was shown that a strict subclass of SP posets are distinguishable via their Tutte polynomial, while it was left undetermined whether the Tutte polynomial distinguishes all SP posets.

The Generalized Interval Polynomial of a Poset  (2511.14924 - George et al., 18 Nov 2025) in Section 6, “Series-Parallel Posets”