Optimal Mal’tsev conditions for congruence modular varieties

Abstract

For varieties, congruence modularity is equivalent to the tolerance intersection property, TIP in short. Based on TIP, it was proved in [5] that for an arbitrary lattice identity implying modularity (or at least congruence modularity) there exists a Mal’tsev condition such that the identity holds in congruence lattices of algebras of a variety if and only if the variety satisfies the corresponding Mal’tsev condition. However, the Mal’tsev condition constructed in [5] is not the simplest known one in general. Now we improve this result by constructing the best Mal’tsev condition and various related conditions. As an application, we give a particularly easy new proof of the result of Freese and Jonsson [11] stating that modular congruence varieties are Arguesian, and we strengthen this result by replacing “Arguesian” by “higher Arguesian” in the sense of Haiman [18]. We show that lattice terms for congruences of an arbitrary congruence modular variety can be computed in two steps: the first step mimics the use of congruence distributivity, while the second step corresponds to congruence permutability. Particular cases of this result were known; the present approach using TIP is even simpler than the proofs of the previous partial results.