A Guide to Self-Distributive Quasigroups, Or Latin Quandles
A GUIDE TO SELF-DISTRIBUTIVE QUASIGROUPS, OR LATIN QUANDLES DAVID STANOVSKY´ Abstract. We present an overview of the theory of self-distributive quasigroups, both in the two- sided and one-sided cases, and relate the older results to the modern theory of quandles, to which self-distributive quasigroups are a special case. Most attention is paid to the representation results (loop isotopy, linear representation, homogeneous representation), as the main tool to investigate self-distributive quasigroups. 1. Introduction 1.1. The origins of self-distributivity. Self-distributivity is such a natural concept: given a binary operation on a set A, fix one parameter, say the left one, and consider the mappings ∗ La(x) = a x, called left translations. If all such mappings are endomorphisms of the algebraic structure (A,∗ ), the operation is called left self-distributive (the prefix self- is usually omitted). Equationally,∗ the property says a (x y) = (a x) (a y) ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ for every a, x, y A, and we see that distributes over itself. Self-distributivity∈ was pinpointed already∗ in the late 19th century works of logicians Peirce and Schr¨oder [69, 76], and ever since, it keeps appearing in a natural way throughout mathematics, perhaps most notably in low dimensional topology (knot and braid invariants) [12, 15, 63], in the theory of symmetric spaces [57] and in set theory (Laver’s groupoids of elementary embeddings) [15]. Recently, Moskovich expressed an interesting statement on his blog [60] that while associativity caters to the classical world of space and time, distributivity is, perhaps, the setting for the emerging world of information.
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