Idempotents, free products and quandle coverings

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate idempotents in quandle rings and relate them with quandle coverings. We prove that integral quandle rings of quandles of finite type that are nontrivial coverings over nice base quandles admit infinitely many nontrivial idempotents, and give their complete description. We show that the set of all these idempotents forms a quandle in itself. As an application, we deduce that the quandle ring of the knot quandle of a nontrivial long knot admit nontrivial idempotents. We consider free products of quandles and prove that integral quandle rings of free quandles have only trivial idempotents, giving an infinite family of quandles with this property. We also give a description of idempotents in quandle rings of unions and certain twisted unions of quandles.