COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY OF VARIOUS MAL'CEV CONDITIONS

This paper examines the computational complexity of determining whether or not an algebra satisfies a certain Mal'Cev condition. First, we define a class of Mal'Cev conditions whose satisfaction can be determined in polynomial time (special cube term satisfying the DCP) when the algebra in question is idempotent and provide an algorithm through which this determination may be made. The aforementioned class notably includes near unanimity terms and edge terms of fixed arity. Second, we define a different class of Mal'Cev conditions whose satisfaction, in general, requires exponential time to determine (Mal'Cev conditions satisfiable by CPB0 operations).

BOOLEAN FACTOR CONGRUENCES AND PROPERTY (*)

A variety [Formula: see text] has Boolean factor congruences (BFC) if the set of factor congruences of any algebra in [Formula: see text] is a distributive sublattice of its congruence lattice; this property holds in rings with unit and in every variety which has a semilattice operation. BFC has a prominent role in the study of uniqueness of direct product representations of algebras, since it is a strengthening of the refinement property. We provide an explicit Mal'cev condition for BFC. With the aid of this condition, it is shown that BFC is equivalent to a variant of the definability property (*), an open problem in Willard's work[9].

A finite basis theorem for residually finite, congruence meet-semidistributive varieties

We derive a Mal'cev condition for congruence meet-semidistributivity and then use it to prove two theorems. Theorem A: if a variety in a finite language is congruence meet-semidistributive and residually less than some finite cardinal, then it is finitely based. Theorem B: there is an algorithm which, given m < ω and a finite algebra in a finite language, determines whether the variety generated by the algebra is congruence meet-semidistributive and residually less than m.

The Relationship Between Two Commutators

We clarify the relationship between the linear commutator and the ordinary commutator by showing that in any variety satisfying a nontrivial idempotent Mal'cev condition the linear commutator is definable in terms of the centralizer relation. We derive from this that abelian algebras are quasi-affine in such varieties. We refine this by showing that if A is an abelian algebra and [Formula: see text](A) satisfies an idempotent Mal'cev condition which fails to hold in the variety of semilattices, then A is affine.