Ideal on a set

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In mathematics, an ideal on a set is a family of subsets which is closed under subsets and finite unions. Informally, sets which belong to the ideal are considered "small" or "negligible".

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The concept is generalized both by ideals on a partially ordered set (an ideal on a set is an ideal on the powerset partially ordered by inclusion), and by ideals on rings (an ideal on is an ideal on the Boolean ring ). The notion dual to ideals is filters.

Definition

Given a set , an ideal on is a set of subsets of such that:

A proper ideal is an ideal which is proper as a subset of the powerset (i.e., the only improper ideal is , consisting of all possible subsets). By downwards-closure, an ideal is proper if and only if it does not contain . Some authors adopt the convention that an ideal must be proper by definition.

Terminology

An element of an ideal is said to be -null or -negligible, or simply null or negligible if the ideal is understood from context. If is an ideal on then a subset of is said to be -positive (or just positive) if it is not an element of The collection of all -positive subsets of is denoted

If is a proper ideal on and for every either or then is a prime ideal.

Examples of ideals

General examples

Ideals on the natural numbers

Ideals on the real numbers

Ideals on other sets

Operations on ideals

Given ideals I and J on underlying sets X and Y respectively, one forms the skew or Fubini product , an ideal on the Cartesian product as follows: For any subset That is, a set lies in the product ideal if only a negligible collection of x-coordinates correspond to a non-negligible slice of A in the y-direction. (Perhaps clearer: A set is positive in the product ideal if positively many x-coordinates correspond to positive slices.)

An ideal I on a set X induces an equivalence relation on the powerset of X, considering A and B to be equivalent (for subsets of X) if and only if the symmetric difference of A and B is an element of I. The quotient of by this equivalence relation is a Boolean algebra, denoted (read "P of X mod I").

To every ideal there is a corresponding filter, called its dual filter. If I is an ideal on X, then the dual filter of I is the collection of all sets where A is an element of I. (Here denotes the relative complement of A in X; that is, the collection of all elements of X that are not in A).

Relationships among ideals

If and are ideals on and respectively, and are Rudin–Keisler isomorphic if they are the same ideal except for renaming of the elements of their underlying sets (ignoring negligible sets). More formally, the requirement is that there be sets and elements of and respectively, and a bijection such that for any subset if and only if the image of under

If and are Rudin–Keisler isomorphic, then and are isomorphic as Boolean algebras. Isomorphisms of quotient Boolean algebras induced by Rudin–Keisler isomorphisms of ideals are called trivial isomorphisms.

See also

Notes

  1. The union of zero subsets of is the empty set.

References