One-generated clones of operations on binary relations (Q1097288)

A clone over a set A is a set of finitary operations on A closed under superpositions and containing the projections. The author investigates clones over the set Re(U) of all binary relations on a set U with at least two elements. He shows that every finitely generated clone over Re(U) containing the Sheffer stroke is one-generated. In particular, every clone over Re(U) containing the Sheffer stroke and the relational composition is one-generated. The ``classical cone'' over Re(U) is the clone generated by the Boolean set operations \(\cup\), \(\cap\), \(\emptyset\), \(U\times U\), \({}^ c\), the relation composition \(\circ\), the operation of forming the inverse \(^{-1}\) and the identity relation E, where constants are regarded as constant unary operations. It is proved that the classical clone and - more generally - the clone of an arbitrary relation algebra in the sense of \textit{B. Jónsson} [Algebra Univers. 15, 273-298 (1973; Zbl 0545.08009)] is one-generated by a binary operation, thus solving a problem posed by Jónsson.