The Dimension Monoid of a Lattice Friedrich Wehrung C.N.R.S., Universite´ de Caen, Campus II, Departement´ de Mathematiques,´ B.P. 5186, 14032 CAEN cedex, FRANCE E-mail address:
[email protected] URL: http://www.math.unicaen.fr/~wehrung arXiv:math/0501437v1 [math.GM] 25 Jan 2005 1991 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 06B05, 06B10, 06C10, 06C20, 20M14, 28B10; Secondary 16E50, 19A49 Key words and phrases. lattice, refinement monoid, dimension monoid, semilattice, primitive monoid, BCF lattice, modular lattice, complemented modular lattice, perspectivity, projectivity by decomposition, normal equivalence, normal lattice, countable meet-continuity, von Neumann regular ring Abstract. We introduce the dimension monoid of a lattice L, denoted by Dim L. The monoid Dim L is commutative and conical, the latter meaning that the sum of any two nonzero elements is nonzero. Furthermore, Dim L is given along with the dimension map, ∆, from L × L to Dim L, which has the intuitive meaning of a distance function. The maximal semilattice quotient of Dim L is isomorphic to the semilattice Conc L of compact congruences of L; hence Dim L is a precursor of the congruence lattice of L. Here are some additional features of this construction: (1) Our dimension theory provides a generalization to all lattices of the von Neumann dimension theory of continuous geometries. In particular, if L is an irreducible continuous geometry, then Dim L is either isomorphic to Z+ or to R+. (2) If L has no infinite bounded chains, then Dim L embeds (as an ordered monoid) into a power of Z+ ∪ {∞}. (3) If L is modular or if L has no infinite bounded chains, then Dim L is a refinement monoid.