Non-representable distributive semilattices (Q942205)

The investigation of congruence lattices is one of the central topics in universal algebra. It is well known that a lattice is isomorphic to the congruence lattice of some algebra if and only if it is algebraic (see [\textit{G. Grätzer} and \textit{E. T. Schmidt}, Acta Sci. Math. 24, 34--50 (1963; Zbl 0117.26101)]). Congruence lattices of lattices have an additional property: they are distributive. The question whether the converse of this is true, is referred to as the Congruence Lattice Problem (CLP): Is every distributive algebraic lattice isomorphic to the congruence lattice of some lattice? The finite version of this problem has been solved by R. P. Dilworth, who proved that every finite distributive lattice is isomorphic to the congruence lattice of some finite lattice. During the subsequent 60 years of effort, various partial positive results have been achieved, but the conjecture was finally disproved by \textit{F. Wehrung} in [Adv. Math. 216, 610--625 (2007; Zbl 1140.06003)]. The impact of this problem to the development of lattice theory has been described by \textit{G. Grätzer} in the expository paper [Notices Am. Math. Soc. 54, 696--707 (2007; Zbl 1286.06001)]. In the present paper the author further develops Wehrung's method and provides two other examples disproving CLP. These constructions are simpler than Wehrung's original example and can help to understand which distributive algebraic lattices are isomorphic to congruence lattices of lattices and other kinds of algebras.