Given a root system, the choice of a root basis divides the set of roots into the positive and the negative ones, it also yields an ordering on the set of positive roots. The set of positive roots with respect to this ordering is called a root poset. The root posets have attracted a lot of interest in the last years. The set of antichains (with a suitable ordering) in a root poset turns out to be a lattice, it is called lattice of (generalized) non-crossing partitions. As Ingalls and Thomas have shown, this lattice is isomorphic to the lattice of thick subcategories of a hereditary abelian category of Dynkin type. The isomorphism can be used in order to provide conceptual proofs of several intriguing counting results for non-crossing partitions.
