The Kelly--Trotter product conjecture for posets of dimension three

Abstract: Kelly and Trotter conjectured that dim(P x Q) >= dim P + dim Q - 2 for all finite posets P and Q. We prove the conjecture when dim P = dim Q = 3. This also disproves Trotter's conjecture that, for every 1 <= m <= n, there exist finite posets P and Q with dim P = m, dim Q = n, and dim(P x Q) = n. We further prove that dim(C_k x P) = 4 for every finite poset P with dim P = 3 and every crown C_k with k >= 3. The proof uses the classification of 3-irreducible posets and graphs of critical pairs. For the six infinite noncrown families, we construct explicit non-3-colorable subgraphs. The ten fixed posets are handled by an exhaustive 3-coloring search.