What are some examples of these kinds of commutative semirings?

711 Views Asked by At

What are some examples of commutative semirings such that the following hold?

  1. Multiplication is idempotent i.e. we have $xx=x$ for all elements $x$.
  2. Addition is not idempotent i.e. there is at least one element $x$ with $x+x \neq x$.
  3. There is at least one element $x$ with $x+x \neq 0$.

I cannot think of any examples, with or without commutativity.

Discussion. In ring theory, it is a theorem that if multiplication is idempotent, then $x+x=0$ for all elements $x$. However, in semiring theory, this isn't necessarily the case; take, in particular, any non-trivial distributive lattice. Then it is certainly the case that $x+x \neq 0$ for all $x,$ except $x=0$ of course. In fact, we have that $x+x=x$ for all elements $x$.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

The initial semiring is $\mathbb{N}$ (with the usual operations). Hence, the initial boolean semiring is $R = \mathbb{N} / \sim$, where $\sim$ is the smallest congruence relation such that $n \sim n^2$ for all $n \in \mathbb{N}$. Hence, we also have $n_1^2 + \dotsc + n_s^2 \sim n_1 + \dotsc + n_s$. The elements of $R$ are therefore $$[0],[1],[2],[3],[4]=[2],[5]=[3],[6]=[2],[7]=[3],\dotsc$$ We find that $R$ is actually finite, it has exactly $4$ elements. This ring satisfies your requirements.

Another example is the free boolean semiring on one generator $x$. It is given by $\{a+bx : a,b \in R\}$ modulo the relation $a+bx \sim (a+bx)^2 = (a+b)+(2ab)x$. This semiring is also finite and its elements may be listed explicitly, if one wants to.