Homomorphs and formations of given derived class

Abstract

AbstractA homomorph H is a normal Schunck class if and only if there exists a derived class χ such that H = χ*; moreover, in this case one has H′ = χ (for the definitions, see below). These results give to the derived classes a decisive significance on the study of the normal Schunck classes (see (5)). The aim of this paper is to study the homomorphs H such that H′ is a fixed derived class: we prove that these homomorphs compose a complete and distributive lattice for the inclusion relation (the maximum of this lattice being a normal Schunck class). We construct the greatest and the smallest formations whose derived class is given. We prove finally that, except in trivial cases, a normal Schunck class is not a formation.