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Part of the excercise I am currently doing is finding the congruences of the following lattice: lattice

The problem I struggle with the most is what happends when $1 \sim d$ - how to find what is the relationship between the rest of the elements?

As there are two votes to close this question as this is somehow marked as offtopic I would like to say that this question is about understanding the concept of congruences in a lattice which as far as I am concerned is strictly connected to this site and complies to the set of questions that can appear on this site. There were asked similar questions on this site before but they are all more complex so I couldn't use them for reference.

Max
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  • I added an explanation what I have the biggest problem with - how does $1 \sim d$ affect the possible relationship between the rest of the elements of this lattice. – Max Jan 31 '16 at 16:27
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    Can you at least post a correct picture? Otherwise it looks very sloppy (and attracts close votes, too). – Giuseppe Negro Jan 31 '16 at 18:08
  • When thinking about this question the answer and reasoning in the following question might be useful: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/149494/m-3-is-a-simple-lattice – Max Feb 01 '16 at 22:59
  • Dear @Max, did you find my answer useful? I did my best to address your question, as well as editing it to make it more suitable for this site. At any rate, I am interested in having your feedback. – zarathustra Feb 02 '16 at 19:08
  • I had to investigate a bit more about congurences in a lattice, but yes - you helped me solve my problem, I just forgot to accept it (even though upvoted) – Max Feb 02 '16 at 19:40

1 Answers1

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The trivial congruences are $\Delta$, the equivalence relation that only says $x\sim x$ for $x\in\{0,a,b,c,d,1\}$, and $\nabla$, the full relation.

Now let $\theta$ be a congruence, and suppose that $0$ is equivalent to some $x\in\{a,b,c\}$ in the lattice. Then since $0\vee y = y$ for all $y$, and $x\vee y = 1$ for all $y\in\{a,b,c\}$ with $x\neq y$, we get that $(1,y)\in\theta$ for all $y\in\{a,b,c\}$ with $y\neq x$. Finally pick two distinct $y,z\in\{a,b,c\}$ different than $x$. Then we have $1\wedge y = y$ and $y\wedge z = 0$, so $(0,y)\in\theta$. So we have that $0,a,b,c,1$ are all $\theta$-equivalent. I let you check that we also have that $d$ is equivalent to $1$, so that $\theta=\nabla$. Dually, one concludes that if $\theta$ contains a pair $(1,x)$ for $x\in\{a,b,c,d\}$, then $\theta=\nabla$ too.

Suppose then that $0$ is not $\theta$-equivalent to any other element of the lattice, and similarly for $1$. You can see that this implies that none of $a,b,c$ can be in the same equivalence class. The only remaining case is that $(c,d)$ is in $\Theta$, all the other blocks being singletons. You can check that this is indeed a congruence by simply enumerating cases.

This finally gives that the congruence lattice of this lattice is a 3-element chain: $$\Delta\subset \theta\subset\nabla$$ where $\theta$ is the equivalence relation given by the blocks $\{c,d\},\{a\},\{b\},\{0\},\{1\}$.

Edit: Since you explicitly asked for the case where $\theta$ contains $(1,d)$ in your question, let me treat it here. Applying $\wedge$ with $(b,b)$, we obtain $(b,0)\in\theta$, and similarly $(a,0)\in\theta$. Since $\theta$ is transitive we have $(b,a)\in\theta$. Applying $\vee$ with $(a,0)$ we obtain $(1,a)\in\theta$. So all of $1,a,b,d,0$ are equivalent. Finally applying $\wedge$ between $(c,c)\in\theta$ and $(d,0)\in\theta$ we obtain $(c,0)\in\theta$. So $\theta$ is the full congruence.

zarathustra
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