Are locally finite MV-algebras a variety?
Here you can find the slides of my talk Are locally finite MV-algebras a variety? presented at the Shanks Workshop on Ordered Algebras and Logic at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, US) and on Zoom for the Algebra|Coalgebra seminar of the ILLC (Amsterdam).
The material is based on a joint work with M. Abbadini (University of Salerno).
Unification in Lukasiewicz logic with a finite number of variables
In this paper, coauthored with Marco Abbadini and Federica Di Stefano, we prove that the unification type of Lukasiewicz logic with a finite number of variables is either infinitary or nullary. To achieve this result we use Ghilardi’s categorical characterisation of unification types in terms of projective objects, the categorical duality between finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra, and a homotopy-theoretic argument.
Workshop on “Geometry and non-classical logics”
I am happy to announce that we will host a workshop on “Geometry and non-classical logics” at the campus of the University of Salerno, from the 5th to the 8th of September.
The workshop is one of the events planned within the EU-funded project SYSMICS.
Further information can be found at http://logica.dipmat.unisa.it/sysmics/geoNonLogic/
MV-algebras, infinite dimensional polyhedra, and natural dualities
Leo and I have just finished our paper on the connection between natural dualities and the duality between semisimple MV-algebras and compact Hausdorff spaces with definable maps. Actually, we provide a description of definable maps that is intrinsically geometric. In addition, we give some applications to semisimple tensor products, strongly semisimple and polyhedral MV-algebras.
The paper can be downloaded here.
A(nother) duality for the whole variety of MV-algebras
This is the abstract of a talk I gave in Florence at Beyond 2014.
Given a category C one can form its ind-completion by taking all formal directed colimits of objects in C. The “correct” arrows to consider are then families of some special equivalence classes of arrows in C (Johnstone 1986, V.1.2, pag. 225). The pro-completion is formed dually by taking all formal directed limits. For general reasons, the ind-completion of a category C is dually equivalent to the pro-completion of the dual category C^{\rm op}.
$$\textrm{ind}\mbox{-}C\simeq (\textrm{pro}\mbox{-}(C^{\rm{op}}))^{\rm{op}}. \qquad\qquad (1)$$
Ind- and pro- completions are very useful objects (as they are closed under directed (co)limits) but cumbersome to use, because of the involved definitions of arrows between objects. We prove that if C is an algebraic category, then the situation considerably simplifies.
If V is any variety of algebras, one can think of any algebra A in V as colimit of finitely presented algebras as follows.
Consider a presentation of A i.e., a cardinal \mu and a congruence [/latex]\theta[/latex] on the free \mu-generated algebra \mathcal{F}(\mu) such that A\cong \mathcal{F}(\mu)/\theta. Now, consider the set F(\theta) of all finitely generated congruences contained in \theta, this gives a directed diagram in which the objects are the finitely presented algebras of the form \mathcal{F}(n)/\theta_{i} where \theta_{i}\in F(\theta) and X_{1},...,X_{n} are the free generators occurring in \theta_{i}. It is straightforward to see that this diagram is directed, for if \mathcal{F}(m)/\theta_{1} and \mathcal{F}(n)/\theta_{2} are in the diagram, then both map into \mathcal{F}(m+n)/\langle\theta_{1}\uplus\theta_{2}\rangle, where \langle\theta_{1}\uplus\theta_{2}\rangle is the congruence generated by the disjoint union of \theta_{1} and \theta_{2}. Now, the colimit of such a diagram is exactly A.
Denoting by V_{\textrm{fp}} the full subcategory of V of finitely presented objects, the above reasoning entails
$$V\simeq\textrm{ind}\mbox{-}V_{\textrm{fp}}. \qquad\qquad (2)$$
We apply our result to the special case where V is the class of MV-algebras. One can then combine the duality between finitely presented MV-algebras and the category P_{\mathbb{Z}} of rational polyhedra with \mathbb{Z}-maps (see here), with (1) and (2) to obtain,
$$MV\simeq\textrm{ind}\mbox{-}MV_{\textrm{fp}}\simeq \textrm{pro}\mbox{-}(P_{\mathbb{Z}})^{\rm{op}}. \qquad\qquad (3)$$
This gives a categorical duality for the whole class of MV-algebras whose geometric content may be more transparent than other dualities in literature. In increasing order of complexity one has that any MV-algebra:
- is dual to a polyhedron (Finitely presented case);
- is dual to an intersection of polyhedra (Semisimple case);
- is dual to a countable nested sequence of polyhedra (Finitely generated case);
- is dual to the directed limit of a family of polyhedra. (General case).
Here are the slides of this talk
