Subdirectly irreducible algebra

Last updated October 19, 2023

In the branch of mathematics known as universal algebra (and in its applications), a subdirectly irreducible algebra is an algebra that cannot be factored as a subdirect product of "simpler" algebras. Subdirectly irreducible algebras play a somewhat analogous role in algebra to primes in number theory.

Definition

A universal algebra A is said to be subdirectly irreducible when A has more than one element, and when any subdirect representation of A includes (as a factor) an algebra isomorphic to A, with the isomorphism being given by the projection map.

Examples

The two-element chain, as either a Boolean algebra, a Heyting algebra, a lattice ^[1]^: 56, or a semilattice, is subdirectly irreducible. In fact, the two-element chain is the only subdirectly irreducible distributive lattice.^[1]^: 56
Any finite chain with two or more elements, as a Heyting algebra, is subdirectly irreducible. (This is not the case for chains of three or more elements as either lattices or semilattices, which are subdirectly reducible to the two-element chain. The difference with Heyting algebras is that a → b need not be comparable with a under the lattice order even when b is.)
Any finite cyclic group of order a power of a prime (i.e. any finite p-group) is subdirectly irreducible.^[1]^: 56 (One weakness of the analogy between subdirect irreducibles and prime numbers is that the integers are subdirectly representable by any infinite family of nonisomorphic prime-power cyclic groups, e.g. just those of order a Mersenne prime assuming there are infinitely many.) In fact, an abelian group is subdirectly irreducible if and only if it is isomorphic to a finite p-group or isomorphic to a Prüfer group (an infinite but countable p-group, which is the direct limit of its finite p-subgroups).^[1]^: 61
A vector space is subdirectly irreducible if and only if it has dimension one.

Properties

The subdirect representation theorem of universal algebra states that every algebra is subdirectly representable by its subdirectly irreducible quotients. An equivalent definition of "subdirect irreducible" therefore is any algebra A that is not subdirectly representable by those of its quotients not isomorphic to A. (This is not quite the same thing as "by its proper quotients" because a proper quotient of A may be isomorphic to A, for example the quotient of the semilattice (Z, $min$ ) obtained by identifying just the two elements 3 and 4.)

An immediate corollary is that any variety, as a class closed under homomorphisms, subalgebras, and direct products, is determined by its subdirectly irreducible members, since every algebra A in the variety can be constructed as a subalgebra of a suitable direct product of the subdirectly irreducible quotients of A, all of which belong to the variety because A does. For this reason one often studies not the variety itself but just its subdirect irreducibles.

An algebra A is subdirectly irreducible if and only if it contains two elements that are identified by every proper quotient, equivalently, if and only if its lattice Con A of congruences has a least nonidentity element. That is, any subdirect irreducible must contain a specific pair of elements witnessing its irreducibility in this way. Given such a witness (a, b) to subdirect irreducibility we say that the subdirect irreducible is (a, b)-irreducible.

Given any class C of similar algebras, Jónsson's lemma (due to Bjarni Jónsson) states that if the variety HSP(C) generated by C is congruence-distributive, its subdirect irreducibles are in HSP_U(C), that is, they are quotients of subalgebras of ultraproducts of members of C. (If C is a finite set of finite algebras, the ultraproduct operation is redundant.)

Applications

A necessary and sufficient condition for a Heyting algebra to be subdirectly irreducible is for there to be a greatest element strictly below 1. The witnessing pair is that element and 1, and identifying any other pair a, b of elements identifies both a→b and b→a with 1 thereby collapsing everything above those two implications to 1. Hence every finite chain of two or more elements as a Heyting algebra is subdirectly irreducible.

By Jónsson's Lemma, subdirectly irreducible algebras of a congruence-distributive variety generated by a finite set of finite algebras are no larger than the generating algebras, since the quotients and subalgebras of an algebra A are never larger than A itself. For example, the subdirect irreducibles in the variety generated by a finite linearly ordered Heyting algebra H must be just the nondegenerate quotients of H, namely all smaller linearly ordered nondegenerate Heyting algebras. The conditions cannot be dropped in general: for example, the variety of all Heyting algebras is generated by the set of its finite subdirectly irreducible algebras, but there exist subdirectly irreducible Heyting algebras of arbitrary (infinite) cardinality. There also exists a single finite algebra generating a (non-congruence-distributive) variety with arbitrarily large subdirect irreducibles.^[2]

Related Research Articles

In mathematics, a semigroup is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with an associative internal binary operation on it.

Ring theory is the branch of mathematics in which rings are studied: that is, structures supporting both an addition and a multiplication operation. This is a glossary of some terms of the subject.

In mathematics, a Heyting algebra (also known as pseudo-Boolean algebra) is a bounded lattice (with join and meet operations written ∨ and ∧ and with least element 0 and greatest element 1) equipped with a binary operation a → b of implication such that (c ∧ a) ≤ b is equivalent to c ≤ (a → b). From a logical standpoint, A → B is by this definition the weakest proposition for which modus ponens, the inference rule A → B, A ⊢ B, is sound. Like Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras form a variety axiomatizable with finitely many equations. Heyting algebras were introduced by Arend Heyting (1930) to formalize intuitionistic logic.

In mathematics, a distributive lattice is a lattice in which the operations of join and meet distribute over each other. The prototypical examples of such structures are collections of sets for which the lattice operations can be given by set union and intersection. Indeed, these lattices of sets describe the scenery completely: every distributive lattice is—up to isomorphism—given as such a lattice of sets.

In mathematics, a quotient algebra is the result of partitioning the elements of an algebraic structure using a congruence relation. Quotient algebras are also called factor algebras. Here, the congruence relation must be an equivalence relation that is additionally compatible with all the operations of the algebra, in the formal sense described below. Its equivalence classes partition the elements of the given algebraic structure. The quotient algebra has these classes as its elements, and the compatibility conditions are used to give the classes an algebraic structure.

This is a glossary of some terms used in various branches of mathematics that are related to the fields of order, lattice, and domain theory. Note that there is a structured list of order topics available as well. Other helpful resources might be the following overview articles:

A lattice is an abstract structure studied in the mathematical subdisciplines of order theory and abstract algebra. It consists of a partially ordered set in which every pair of elements has a unique supremum and a unique infimum. An example is given by the power set of a set, partially ordered by inclusion, for which the supremum is the union and the infimum is the intersection. Another example is given by the natural numbers, partially ordered by divisibility, for which the supremum is the least common multiple and the infimum is the greatest common divisor.

In the mathematical area of order theory, completeness properties assert the existence of certain infima or suprema of a given partially ordered set (poset). The most familiar example is the completeness of the real numbers. A special use of the term refers to complete partial orders or complete lattices. However, many other interesting notions of completeness exist.

In the mathematical area of order theory, there are various notions of the common concept of distributivity, applied to the formation of suprema and infima. Most of these apply to partially ordered sets that are at least lattices, but the concept can in fact reasonably be generalized to semilattices as well.

In the mathematical area of order theory, the compact elements or finite elements of a partially ordered set are those elements that cannot be subsumed by a supremum of any non-empty directed set that does not already contain members above the compact element. This notion of compactness simultaneously generalizes the notions of finite sets in set theory, compact sets in topology, and finitely generated modules in algebra.

In mathematics, a join-semilattice is a partially ordered set that has a join for any nonempty finite subset. Dually, a meet-semilattice is a partially ordered set which has a meet for any nonempty finite subset. Every join-semilattice is a meet-semilattice in the inverse order and vice versa.

In abstract algebra, an interior algebra is a certain type of algebraic structure that encodes the idea of the topological interior of a set. Interior algebras are to topology and the modal logic S4 what Boolean algebras are to set theory and ordinary propositional logic. Interior algebras form a variety of modal algebras.

In mathematics, a complete Boolean algebra is a Boolean algebra in which every subset has a supremum. Complete Boolean algebras are used to construct Boolean-valued models of set theory in the theory of forcing. Every Boolean algebra A has an essentially unique completion, which is a complete Boolean algebra containing A such that every element is the supremum of some subset of A. As a partially ordered set, this completion of A is the Dedekind–MacNeille completion.

In abstract algebra, a residuated lattice is an algebraic structure that is simultaneously a lattice x ≤ y and a monoid x•y which admits operations x\z and z/y, loosely analogous to division or implication, when x•y is viewed as multiplication or conjunction, respectively. Called respectively right and left residuals, these operations coincide when the monoid is commutative. The general concept was introduced by Morgan Ward and Robert P. Dilworth in 1939. Examples, some of which existed prior to the general concept, include Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras, residuated Boolean algebras, relation algebras, and MV-algebras. Residuated semilattices omit the meet operation ∧, for example Kleene algebras and action algebras.

In mathematics, the lattice of subgroups of a group $is the lattice whose elements are the subgroups of, with the partial order relation being set inclusion. In this lattice, the join of two subgroups is the subgroup generated by their union, and the meet of two subgroups is their intersection.$

Boolean algebra is a mathematically rich branch of abstract algebra. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy defines Boolean algebra as 'the algebra of two-valued logic with only sentential connectives, or equivalently of algebras of sets under union and complementation.' Just as group theory deals with groups, and linear algebra with vector spaces, Boolean algebras are models of the equational theory of the two values 0 and 1. Common to Boolean algebras, groups, and vector spaces is the notion of an algebraic structure, a set closed under some operations satisfying certain equations.

In mathematics, the congruence lattice problem asks whether every algebraic distributive lattice is isomorphic to the congruence lattice of some other lattice. The problem was posed by Robert P. Dilworth, and for many years it was one of the most famous and long-standing open problems in lattice theory; it had a deep impact on the development of lattice theory itself. The conjecture that every distributive lattice is a congruence lattice is true for all distributive lattices with at most ℵ₁ compact elements, but F. Wehrung provided a counterexample for distributive lattices with ℵ₂ compact elements using a construction based on Kuratowski's free set theorem.

In mathematics, especially in the areas of abstract algebra known as universal algebra, group theory, ring theory, and module theory, a subdirect product is a subalgebra of a direct product that depends fully on all its factors without however necessarily being the whole direct product. The notion was introduced by Birkhoff in 1944 and has proved to be a powerful generalization of the notion of direct product.

In mathematics, Birkhoff's representation theorem for distributive lattices states that the elements of any finite distributive lattice can be represented as finite sets, in such a way that the lattice operations correspond to unions and intersections of sets. The theorem can be interpreted as providing a one-to-one correspondence between distributive lattices and partial orders, between quasi-ordinal knowledge spaces and preorders, or between finite topological spaces and preorders. It is named after Garrett Birkhoff, who published a proof of it in 1937.

References

1 2 3 4 Bergman, Clifford (2011). Universal Algebra: Fundamentals and Selected Topics. Chapman and Hall/CRC. ISBN 978-1-4398-5129-6.
↑ R. McKenzie, The residual bounds of finite algebras, Int. J. Algebra Comput. 6 (1996), 1–29.

Pierre Antoine Grillet (2007). Abstract algebra. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-71567-4.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Bergman-1] 1 2 3 4 Bergman, Clifford (2011). Universal Algebra: Fundamentals and Selected Topics. Chapman and Hall/CRC. ISBN 978-1-4398-5129-6.

[2] R. McKenzie, The residual bounds of finite algebras, Int. J. Algebra Comput. 6 (1996), 1–29.

[1]

[2]