Distinguished extensions of a lattice-ordered group

Abstract

Any lattice-ordered group (l-group for short) is essentially extended by its lexicographic product with a totally ordered group. That is, anl-homomorphism (i.e., a group and lattice homomorphism) on the extension which is injective on thel-group must be injective on the extension as well. Thus nol-group has a maximal essential extension in the categoryIGp ofl-groups withl-homomorphisms. However, anl-group is a distributive lattice, and so has a maximal essential extension in the categoryD of distributive lattices with lattice homomorphisms. Adistinguished extension of onel-group by another is one which is essential inD. We characterize such extensions, and show that everyl-groupG has a maximal distinguished extensionE(G) which is unique up to anl-isomorphism overG.E(G) contains most other known completions in whichG is order dense, and has mostl-group completeness properties as a result. Finally, we show that ifG is projectable then E(G) is the α-completion of the projectable hull ofG.