Essential completions of distributive lattices

Abstract

The salient feature of the essential completion process is that for most common distributive lattices it will yield a completely distributive lattice. In this note it is shown that for those distributive lattices which have at least one completely distributive essential extension the essential completion is minimal among the completions by infinitely distributive lattices. Thus in its setting the essential completion of a distributive lattice behaves in much the some way as the one-point compactification of locally compact topological space does in its setting.