Idempotent endomorphisms of free MV-algebras and unital \(\ell\)-groups (Q343592)

For counting the number of idempotent endomorphisms of a structure \(S\) onto a substructure \(T\), the authors consider the case when \(T\) is a projective lattice-ordered abelian group with a distinguished strong order unit, or equivalently, a projective MV-algebra. Suppose \(A\) is the image (= range) of an idempotent endomorphism of the free \(n\)-generator MV-algebra \(\mathcal M ([0,1]^n)\) of McNaughton functions on \([0,1]^n\). They prove that the number \(\mathrm r(A)\) of idempotent endomorphisms of \(\mathcal M([0,1]^n)\) onto \(A\) is finite if, and only if, the maximal spectral space \(\mu_A\) is homeomorphic to a (Kuratowski) closed domain \(M\) of \([0,1]^n\), in the sense that \(M=\mathrm{cl}(\operatorname{int}(M))\). Further, the closed domain condition is decidable and \(\mathrm r(A)\) is computable, once an idempotent endomorphism of \(\mathcal M([0,1]^n)\) onto \(A\) is explicitly given. Thus, every finitely generated projective MV-algebra \(B\) comes equipped with a new invariant \(\iota(B)=\sup\{\mathrm r(A)\mid A\cong B\), for \(A\) the image of an idempotent endomorphism of \(\mathcal M([0,1]^k)\}\), and \(k\) the smallest number of generators of \(B\). We compute \(\iota(B)\) for many projective MV-algebras \(B\) existing in the literature. Various problems concerning idempotent endomorphisms of free MV-algebras are shown to be decidable.