Varieties of Orthomodular Lattices

Abstract

In this paper we start investigating the lattice of varieties of orthomodular lattices. The varieties studied here are those generated by orthomodular lattices which are the horizontal sum of Boolean algebras. It turns out that these form a principal ideal in the lattice of all varieties of orthomodular lattices. We give a complete description of this ideal; in particular, we show that each variety in it is generated by its finite members. We furthermore show that each of these varieties is finitely based by exhibiting a (rather complicated) finite equational basis for each variety.Our methods rely heavily on B. Jonsson's fundamental results in [8]. This, however, could be avoided by starting out with the equations given in sections 3 and 4. Some of our arguments were suggested by Baker [1],