Dualities induced by topological semirings (Q726709)

Classical results on recovering a (compact Hausdorff) space \(X\) from its ring of continuous functions, as well as from much more feeble related algebraic structures, are well known, and typically involve a construction closely related to the spectrum (of prime ideals) of a ring as well as the spectrum of maximal ideals, giving rise to various duality theorems. The authors present an elegant approach to tackle numerous such dualities by considering semiring theory. In Sections 2--4 the authors set the stage, presenting general results about spectra of semirings, blueprints (namely a commutative unital semiring together with a multiplicative submonoid), spectra of blueprints, the localization functor from blueprints to semirings (inverting the chosen monoid), and Gelfand semirings and their spectra. The rest of the article is then concerned with the following. Fix a commutative unital topological semiring \(S\) and a closed proper prime ideal \(N\). Considering certain continuous function \(X\to S\) yields a functor from the category of topological spaces to the category of blueprints, with the related spectrum constraction, leading to the main result; a condition on the pair \((S,N)\) and identification of a class of spaces so that a space is recovered from its blueprint of functions by means of a suitable spectrum of maximal ideals.