Absolute retracts and essential extensions in congruence modular varieties

Congruence modularity, congruence distributivity (08B10) Products, amalgamated products, and other kinds of limits and colimits (08B25) Subdirect products and subdirect irreducibility (08B26) Injectives, projectives (08B30)

Abstract: This paper studies absolute retracts in congruence modular varieties of universal algebras. It is shown that every absolute retract with finite dimensional congruence lattice is a product of subdirectly irreducible algebras. Further, every absolute retract in a residually small variety is the product of an abelian algebra and a centerless algebra.

Review text

In this paper the author studies absolute retracts in congruence modular varieties. An algebra \(\mathbb{ R}\) of a variety \(\mathcal{V}\) is said to be an \textit{absolute retract} in \(\mathcal{V}\) if for any embedding \(e:\mathbb{ R}\hookrightarrow \mathbf{ A}\) , \(\mathbf{ A}\in \mathcal{V}\), there is a surjective homomorphism \(p:\mathbf{ A}\twoheadrightarrow \mathbb{ R}\) such that \(p\circ e=\mathrm{id}_{R}\). If \(\mathbf{ A}\) is an algebra and \(\alpha\in \text{Con}(\mathbf{ A})\), \[ \begin{aligned} \alpha^{*}:=\{(a,b)\in A^{2}:\forall t\in \text{Clo}_{n+1}(\mathbf{ A}) \forall (\mathbf{ c},\mathbf{ d})\in \alpha, \\ t(a,\mathbf{ c})=t(a,\mathbf{ d}) \Longleftrightarrow t(b,\mathbf{ c})=t(b,\mathbf{ d})\}\end{aligned} \] is a congruence called the \textit{centralizer} of \(\alpha\). The \textit{center} of \(\mathbf{ A}\) is the congruence \(\zeta_{\mathbf{ A}}:=(1_{\mathbf{ A}})^{*}\). \(\mathbf{ A}\) is said to be \textit{abelian} if \(\zeta_{\mathbf{ A}}=1_{\mathbf{ A}}\) and \textit{centerless} if \(\zeta_{\mathbf{ A}}=0_{\mathbf{ A}}\). For \(\alpha, \beta\in \text{Con}(\mathbf{ A})\), the congruence \[ [\alpha,\beta]:=\bigcap\{\gamma\in \text{Con}(\mathbf{ A}): \gamma\subseteq\alpha\wedge \beta \text{ and } (\alpha/\gamma)\subseteq(\beta/\gamma)^{*}\} \] is called the \textit{commutator} of \((\alpha,\beta)\). A variety is said to satisfy the \textit{commutator identity} if the congruences of their algebras satisfies the following: \[ \alpha\wedge[\beta,\beta]=[\alpha\wedge \beta,\beta]. \] The main result of the paper is this: If \(\mathbf{ A}\) is an absolute retract in a congruence modular variety and if Con(\(\mathbf{ A}\)) is of finite height then \(\mathbf{ A}\) is a product of subdirectly irreducible algebras. Further, if the variety satisfies the commutator identity then \(\mathbf{ A}\) is the product of a centerless algebra and an abelian algebra. In particular, if \(\mathbf{A}\) is directly indecomposable, then \(\mathbf{ A}\) is either centerless or abelian. Since a lattice is finite-dimensional iff the lattice is modular and of finite height (see Theorem 2.42 of [\textit{R. N. McKenzie} et al., Algebras, lattices, varieties. Volume I. Monterey, California: Wadsworth \& Brooks/Cole Advance Books \& Software (1987; Zbl 0611.08001)]), the main result of the paper, as stated in the abstract of the paper, is correct. But I think it better as stated in this review since, after all, what is used in the proof is the fact that the lattice congruence is of finite height.

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