On limits in complete semirings (Q1194435)

Apart from basic topological concepts used in the last Sections 6 and 7 the paper is self-contained and provides a systematic overview on numerous important axioms for complete semirings, including illustrative examples and various new results. All semirings \((A,+,\cdot)\) have commutative addition, a zero 0 and an identity 1 and satisfy \(0a = a0 = 0\) for all \(a \in A\). Such a semiring is a complete semiring \((A,+,\cdot,\sum)\) if \(\sum_{i \in I}x_ i\) is defined for each family \((x_ i,i\in I)\) of elements of \(A\), subjected to certain axioms. The algebraic limit concept used in the paper, due to Kuich and Salomaa, consists of a pair \((D,\lim)\) where \(D\subseteq A^{\mathbb{N}}\) is a certain set of sequences and \(\lim: D\to A\) a mapping satisfying natural rules. The discrete convergence (\(D_ d,\lim_ d\)) can be defined in each semiring. It leads to the investigation of complete semirings \((A,+,\cdot,\sum)\) which are \(d\)-complete (Section 3). They are always (positively) partially ordered and \(\lim_ d\) can be defined by infinite sums if \(\sum\) is compatible with \(\lim_ d\). The more general concept of \(l\)-complete semirings \((A,+,\cdot,\sum)\), considered in Section 4, arises in order to define a notion of convergence \((D,\lim)\) by the use of \(\sum\). The next important concepts are partially ordered complete semirings \((A,+,\cdot,\leq,\sum)\) which are finitary or at least \(\omega\)-finitary. The main point is that the latter are characterized by the property, that the limit function is compatible with the partial order. An excellent figure shows all implications corresponding to the results of Sections 2-5 accompanied by a counter-example for each reverse direction. Similar figures illustrate the results of the last both sections on topological complete semirings and on idempotent and finite semirings.