English

Self-divisible ultrafilters and congruences in $\beta\mathbb{Z}$

Logic 2025-10-30 v2

Abstract

We introduce self-divisible ultrafilters, which we prove to be precisely those ww such that the weak congruence relation w\equiv_w introduced by \v{S}obot is an equivalence relation on βZ\beta\mathbb{Z}. We provide several examples and additional characterisations; notably we show that ww is self-divisible if and only if w\equiv_w coincides with the strong congruence relation ws\equiv^{\mathrm{s}}_{w}, if and only if the quotient (βZ,)/ws(\beta\mathbb{Z},\oplus)/\mathord{\equiv^{\mathrm{s}}_w} is a profinite group. We also construct an ultrafilter ww such that w\equiv_w fails to be symmetric, and describe the interaction between the aforementioned quotient and the profinite completion Z^\hat{\mathbb{Z}} of the integers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.09983,
  title  = {Self-divisible ultrafilters and congruences in $\beta\mathbb{Z}$},
  author = {Mauro Di Nasso and Lorenzo Luperi Baglini and Rosario Mennuni and Moreno Pierobon and Mariaclara Ragosta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.09983},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 1 figure