Actions of Boolean rings on sets (Q583355)

Let B be a Boolean ring (with 1), \({\mathfrak S}^ a \)sheaf of sets on the Stone space Spec(B), and S the set of global sections of \({\mathfrak S}\). For every \(a\in B\) and \(s,t\in S\), let a(s,t) denote the element of S which agrees with s on the support of a, and with t elsewhere. The properties of this ternary operation \(B\times S\times S\to S\) are studied. For each \(b\in B\), the operation \(b(-,-)\) satisfies the identities (1) \(b(s,s)=s\), (2) \(b(b(s,t),u)=b(s,u)\), (3) \(b(s,b(t,u))=b(s,u)\); i.e., it is a semigroup of the sort known as a rectangular band. Moreover, the Boolean ring operations on B are related to these band operations by the laws (4) \(0(s,t)=t\), (5) \((1-b)(s,t)=b(t,s)\), (6) \((ab)(s,t)=a(b(s,t),t)\). For a fixed Boolean ring B, a set S given with an operation \(B\times S\times S\to S\) satisfying these identities is named a B-set. The main result of this paper is that the above construction yields a functorial equivalence between sheaves of sets on S on Spec(B) with nonempty sets of global sections, and nonempty B-sets S. (A key step is to verify that (1)-(6) imply the commutativity relation a(b(r,s), \(b(t,u))=b(a(r,t)\), a(s,u)) between the rectangular band structures induced by two elements \(a,b\in B.)\) For any set A, the bounded Boolean power \(A[B]^*\) is shown to be the free B-set on A. The variety of B- sets, as B ranges over all Boolean rings, is shown to constitute (together with one trivial variety) the least nontrivial hypervariety of algebras, in the sense of \textit{W. Taylor} [Aequationes Math. 23, 30-49 (1981; Zbl 0491.08009)]. An appendix ({\S} 8-11) gives background on some of the basic concepts used, including those of sheaf and rectangular band. A digressive section ({\S} 7) examines the possible failure of commutativity of a pair of product decompositions of a set or algebra, \(P\cong Q\times S'\cong Q'\times S\), such that projection to Q is ``coarser'' than projection to \(Q'\) and projection to \(S'\) is ``finer'' than projection to S.