Essential arities of term operations in finite algebras (Q1910581)

If \(C\) is a clone on a set \(A\) and \(n \geq 1\), then \(E_n (C)\) denotes the subset of \(C\) consisting of \(n\)-ary operations which depend on all their variables. \(E_0 (C)\) is the set of all constant-valued unary operations in \(C\). \(p_n (C)\) denotes the cardinality of \(E_n (C)\). If \(A\) is an algebra and \(\text{Clo} A\) the clone of all its term operations then \(p_n (A) = p_n (\text{Clo} A)\). A natural question is which sequences of nonnegative integers are representable as the \(p_n\)-sequences of some clone \(C\). The proofs of known results usually require infinite algebras with operations of arbitrarily large arities. Therefore, there has been posed the corresponding question for the \(p_n\)-sequences of algebras which are finite, of finite type, or whose operations have bounded arities. The paper contains important results on \(p_n\)-sequences of such algebras. Let \(p\) be the \(p_n\)-sequence of some finite algebra, let \(S = \{n \in N\); \(p_n^* > 0\}\) where \(p^*_n = p_n\) for \(n \neq 1\) and \(p^*_1 = p_1 - 1\). Main results: (1) \(p\) is either bounded or \(p_n \geq n\) for sufficiently large \(n\); (2) \(S\) is equal modulo a finite set to \(\emptyset\) or \(N\) or the set of odd positive integers; (3) in the last case, \(p = \langle \dots, 0,M,0,M, \dots \rangle\) eventually. The author characterizes those subsets \(S \subseteq N\) which arise in this way, solving a problem of Grätzer and Kisielewicz. The author also refutes a conjecture of Berman concerning the behavior of \(p\), and proves several results concerning totally symmetric operations on a finite set.