Complemented MacNeille completions and algebras of fractions

Abstract

We introduce (ℓ-)bimonoids as ordered algebras consisting of two compatible monoidal structures on a partially ordered (lattice-ordered) set. Bimonoids form an appropriate framework for the study of a general notion of complementation, which subsumes both Boolean complements in bounded distributive lattices and multiplicative inverses in monoids. The central question of the paper is whether and how bimonoids can be embedded into complemented bimonoids, generalizing the embedding of cancellative commutative monoids into their groups of fractions and of bounded distributive lattices into their free Boolean extensions. We prove that each commutative (ℓ-)bimonoid embeds into a complete complemented commutative ℓ-bimonoid in a doubly dense way reminiscent of the Dedekind–MacNeille completion. Moreover, this complemented completion, which is term equivalent to a commutative involutive residuated lattice, sometimes contains a tighter complemented envelope analogous to the group of fractions. In the case of cancellative commutative monoids this algebra of fractions is precisely the familiar group of fractions, while in the case of Brouwerian (Heyting) algebras it is a (bounded) idempotent involutive commutative residuated lattice. This construction of the algebra of fractions in fact yields a categorical equivalence between varieties of integral and of involutive residuated structures which subsumes as special cases the known equivalences between Abelian ℓ-groups and their negative cones, and between Sugihara monoids and their negative cones.