Variety-independence in lattice theory (Q1825213)

A lattice identity is variety independent if the following is true: if it holds for distributive lattices, then it holds for all lattices. The authors give some syntactic conditions that imply that an identity is variety-independent. Theorem 1 states that an identity of the form \(p=x_ 1\vee x_ 2\vee...\vee x_ k\) is variety independent. - The depth of a polynomial (inductively defined) is used in Theorem 2, which says that if the depth of both sides of an identity is at most two, then the identity is either variety-independent or is equivalent to distributivity. A polynomial p is said to yield the n-ary operation f modulo a variety V of algebras, if p generates \(f(x_ 1,...,x_ n)\) in the clone of the countably generated V-free algebra. The notion of p directly yielding f is also defined, and several characterizations are given for a polynomial to yield the join. The penultimate section of the paper discusses connections with duality, while in the final section the effect of adding one or both universal bounds to the type is considered.