The annihilation graphs of commutator posets and lattices with respect to an element

Abstract

We propose a new, widely generalized context for the study of the zero-divisor type (annihilating-ideal) graphs, where the vertices of graphs are not elements/ideals of a commutative ring, but elements of an abstract ordered set [lattice] (imitating the lattice of ideals of a ring), equipped with a commutative (not necessarily associative) binary operation (imitating the product of ideals of a ring). We discuss, when [Formula: see text] (the annihilation graph of the commutator poset [lattice] [Formula: see text] with respect to an element [Formula: see text]) is a complete bipartite graph together with some of its other graph-theoretic properties. In contrast to the case of rings, we construct a commutator poset whose [Formula: see text] contains a cut-point. We provide some examples to show that some conditions are not superfluous assumptions. We also give some examples of a large class of lattices, such as the lattice of ideals of a commutative ring, the lattice of normal subgroups of a group, and the lattice of all congruences on an algebra in a variety (congruence modular variety) by using the commutators as the multiplicative binary operation on these lattices. This shows that how the commutator theory can define and unify many zero-divisor type graphs of different algebraic structures as a special case of this paper.