On subtractive varieties. V: Congruence modularity and the commutators (Q1866798)

The paper is a continuation of a long series of the papers having the first part of the title in common (see Zbl 0799.08010, Zbl 0902.08010, Zbl 0906.08005 and Zbl 0934.08002). The author previously introduced the concept of ideal in universal algebra and showed that, in a subtractive variety \(\mathcal V\), every ideal is a congruence kernel. Recall that \(\mathcal V\) is subtractive if there is a binary term \(s\) such that \(\mathcal V\) satisfies \(s(x,x) = 0\) and \(s(x,0) = x\). In another paper of this series he introduced the concept of commutator of ideals. For an ideal \(I\) of an algebra \(\mathcal A\) the smallest congruence on \(\mathcal A\) having the kernel \(I\) is denoted by \(I^{\delta }\) and the largest one with this property by \(I^{\epsilon }\). For a congruence \(\Theta \in \operatorname {Con} \mathcal A\), its kernel is denoted by \(0/ \Theta \). In a congruence modular subtractive variety there are both the commutator \([I,J]\) of ideals \(I,J\) and that of congruences. It is proved that \([I,J] = 0/ [I^{\delta },J^{\delta }]\). In general, the identity \([0/ \alpha , 0/ \beta ] = 0/ [\alpha , \beta ]\) for \(\alpha , \beta \in \operatorname {Con}\mathcal A\) does not hold, but several sufficient conditions for it are derived. The author deals also with equationally definable principal commutators in a subtractive variety and with the extension property of commutators of ideals.