The homomorphism lattice induced by a finite algebra (Q722581)

Let \(\mathbf A\) be a finite algebra, \(\mathrm{Var}(\mathbf A)\) the variety generated by \(\mathbf A\) and \(\mathrm{Var}(\mathbf A)_{\mathrm{fin}}\) the class of finite members of \(\mathrm{Var}(\mathbf A)\). Let the quasi-order \(\rightarrow\) on \(\mathrm{Var}(\mathbf A)_{\mathrm{ fin}}\) be defined by \(\mathbf B\rightarrow\mathbf C\) if there exists a homomorphism from \(\mathbf B\) to \(\mathbf C\). The associated equivalence relation \(\equiv\) is given by \(\mathbf B\equiv\mathbf C:\Leftrightarrow\mathbf B\rightarrow\mathbf C\) and \(\mathbf C\rightarrow\mathbf B\), and the homomorphism lattice induced by \(\mathbf A\) is defined by \(\mathbf L_\mathbf A:=\langle\mathrm{Var}(\mathbf A)_{\mathrm{fin}}/\equiv;\rightarrow\rangle\). In this paper, the authors introduce the question: ``Which lattices arise as the homomorphism lattices induced by a finite algebra?'' A finite algebra \(\mathbf Q\) is called quasi-primal if the ternary discriminator operation \(\tau\) is a term function, where \[ \tau(x,y,z):=\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} x & \text{if }x\neq y, \\ z & \text{if }x=y. \end{array} \right. \] A large part of the paper focuses on the homomorphism lattice \(\mathbf L_\mathbf Q\) in the case that \(\mathbf Q\) is a quasi-primal algebra. The main result is Theorem~4.1: For each finite distributive lattice \(\mathbf L\), there exists a quasi-primal algebra \(\mathbf Q\) such that \(\mathbf L_{\mathbf Q}\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbf L.\) The proof of this nice result is rather tricky and technical and depends on five lemmas. The analogous question for arbitrary lattices is still open. The authors obtain also representations of some other classes of lattices as homomorphism lattices, in particular all finite partition lattices, all finite subspace lattices and all lattices of the form \(\mathbf L\oplus\mathbf 1\), where \(\mathbf L\) is an interval in the subgroup lattice of a finite group. A long list of 34 references concludes the paper.