Generalized continuous and left-continuous t-norms arising from algebraic semantics for fuzzy logics (Q2269796)

This paper is a state-of-the-art survey on linearly ordered MTL-algebras. The motivation for this survey is to defend the point of view that the right generalizations of left-continuous t-norm algebras, for the purposes of logic and algebra, are exactly the MTL-chains (BL-chains for continuous t-norms). The paper first deals with the structure of BL-chains, and recalls the principal decomposition theorems: in particular, the results stating that every BL-chain is an ordinal sum of indecomposable totally ordered Wajsberg hoops, and that every (order-theoretically) complete BL-chain is the ordinal sum of its Archimedean components. Then the authors study BL-chains defined on the unit rational interval \([0,1] \cap\mathbb Q\). Here they pose the following open problem: To classify the isomorphism classes of Archimedean and of indecomposable Wajsberg hoops over \([0,1] \cap\mathbb Q\). The second part of the paper is concerned with the structure of MTL-chains. The authors point out how, due to the huge richness of these structures, a decomposition result as useful as the one available for BL-chains currently appears to be out of reach. They report on several methods to build left-continuous t-norms (annihilation, rotation, rotation-annihilation, triple rotation), and on the class of regular left-continuous t-norms. They extend some of these constructions to the case of MTL-chains and report on some decomposition techniques based on ordinal sums or rotations and related constructions. They recall the important result that each non-trivial countable MTL-chain embeds into an MTL-chain whose support is \([0,1] \cap\mathbb Q\). They conclude with some remarks about the relations between residuation and (left-)continuity with respect to the order topology.