Subdirectly irreducible modal algebras and initial frames (Q1288966)

The background to this significant paper is the duality theory of modal algebras developed by Sambin and Vaccaro. The author studies the conjecture: the modal algebra \(A\) is subdirectly irreducible (s.i.) iff the dual frame \(A_{*}\) is generated. The author shows that in full generality the conjecture is false, but that it becomes true under some mild additional assumptions, which include the finite case and the case of K4. The author proves, among other things, that \(A\) is s.i. iff the set of points which generate the dual frame \(A_{*}\) is open and not empty. For the sake of completeness we conclude the review with a minor comment on two particular cases: a) the reviewer established the above result for the S4 case [\textit{L. Esakia}, Heyting algebras. I. Duality theory (Russian) (Tbilisi, 1985)]; b) a Magari (alias, diagonalizable) algebra \(A\) is s.i. iff there exists an irreflexive initial point in \(A_{*}\) [\textit{M. Abashidze}, Algebraic analysis of the modal system GL (Russian), Ph.D. thesis (Tbilisi, 1987)].