A second grammar of associators

Abstract

1. Introduction. This paper is concerned with proving identities in commutative Moufang loops. Many such identities were derived in chapter VIII of (1) in the course of demonstrating the local nilpotence of commutative Moufang loops. The results there are regarded as constituting the ‘first grammar of associators’: the reader is assumed to have a good knowledge of them. The current paper develops additional material required for the determination in (5) of the precise nilpotence class of the free commutative Moufang loop on any given finite number of generators. It is called a ‘grammar’ because it lists formal ways in which the language of associators works, and is merely meant to serve a reader of ‘literature’ in the language such as (5). However, it may be of interest for other purposes, such as answering Manin's question ((3), Vopros 10·3; (4), problem 10·2) on the 3-rank of the free commutative Moufang loop of exponent 3. There is also the problem raised below as to whether the Triple Argument Hypothesis is a consequence of the commutative Moufang loop laws. Finally, the Möbius function in Section 9 may tempt someone to look at lattice-theoretical aspects of associators.