1. Introduction
A congruence relation on an algebraic structure is an equivalence relation that is compatible with the given structure, that is, all operations of the structure are well-defined on the equivalence classes. The set of the equivalence classes forms the associated quotient structure, that, in the case of a group, is a quotient group, while in the case of a ring it is a ring. In algebraic hypercompositional structures, where the operations are substituted by hyperoperations (i.e., multi-valued operations), this role of the equivalences is played by the strongly regular relations. Such a relation
is defined on a hypergroup
by the property: if
and
, for
, then, for any
and any
, there is
. A strongly regular relation on a hyperring
R is strongly regular with respect to both hyperoperations of
R. The mathematical concept of hyperring was defined by M. Krasner [
1] in 1956 in the same paper where the hyperfields were introduced in order to solve an important problem dealing with approximations of complete valued fields by sequences of such fields. This algebraic hypercompositional structure has a similar behaviour as a ring and it contains an additive part
, which is a canonical hypergroup and a multiplicative one
, that is a semigroup, while the multiplication is bilaterally distributive with respect to the addition. Besides, a Krasner hyperring is also known as an additive hyperring. There are also other types of hyperrings [
2] and the most general one is the so called general hyperring, introduced by Vougiouklis [
3], where both addition and multiplication are hyperoperations. A short review on the historical part, terminology and the importance of hyperrings is presented by Massouros [
4] or Nakassis [
5] in their expository papers. The quotient structure associated to a hypergroup modulo a strongly regular relation is a group. This is a strong relationship between hypergroups and groups, that permits to study properties of hypergroups using already known properties of groups. In 1970 Koskas [
6] defined the
-relation and its transitive closure
on a hypergroup
H, proving that it is the smallest (with respect to inclusion) strongly regular relation on
H such that the quotient
is a group. The idea was then extended to the class of hyperrings, where Vougiouklis [
3] defined in 1990 a new strongly regular relation, the
-relation, on a general hyperring, such that the quotient structure modulo the transitive closure
is a ring. Both associated quotient structures modulo
and
are not commutative. That is why, new strongly regular relations were defined—first the
-relation on (semi)hypergroups and then the
-relation on a hyperring in order to obtained commutative quotient structures [
7,
8]. The same symbol
was (unfortunately) used to define two different relations, one on hyperrings, and the other one on (semi)hypergroups. In order to avoid confusion, some authors, for example see Reference [
9], which prefers denoting the strongly regular relation on hyperrings with capital
and we also adopt this notation in our current study.
Because of their “fundamental role”, that is, connecting hypercompositional structures with the corresponding classical structures, Vougiouklis [
3,
10] named all these strongly regular relations
fundamental relations. Thus a fundamental relation defined on a hypercompositional structure is the smallest equivalence (with respect to inclusion) so that the associated quotient is a classical structure of the same type of the hypercompositional structure. The fundamental relations
and
defined on a (semi)hypergroup
H lead to a (semi)group
and a commutative (semi)group
as quotient structure, while the fundamental relations
and
on a hyperring are the tool to obtain a ring and a commutative ring, respectively. In 2017, Norouzi and Cristea [
11] introduced a particular class of hyperrings where the fundamental relation
is not anymore the smallest equivalence such that the associated quotient structure is a ring. On this type of hyperrings they defined the fundamental relation
, smaller than
, but with the associated quotient structure non-commutative in general. Thereby, the fundamental relation
was introduced on such hyperrings, obtaining a commutative quotient ring [
12].
On the other hand, all the above mentioned strongly regular relations are not transitive in general. Already in 1970 Koskas [
6] had studied the transitivity property of the
-relation on hypergroups by using the
complete parts, that were used as open subsets of suitable topologies on hypergroups. So they play an important role in defining topological hypercompositional structures [
13]. Inspired by these studies, in this article we first define the concept of
-part on hyperrings and study it in comparison with the complete part,
-part and
m-complete part. In particular, we find conditions under which the relation
is transitive and prove that the equivalence class, modulo the relation
, of any element of a general hyperring is a
-part. Finally, we introduce the class of
-complete hyperrings, characterize them using the
-parts and present their connections with complete,
-complete, and
-complete hyperrings.
2. Preliminaries on the -Relation on Hyperrings
This section contains the basic definitions and results concerning the
-relation on hyperrings that will be used throughout the paper. For more details about hyperstructures theory, specially hyperrings, we refer the readers to References [
3,
10,
14,
15] and references therein.
Definition 1. [15] An algebraic system is said to be a - (1)
(general) hyperring, if is a hypergroup, is a semihypergroup, and the hypermultiplication · is distributive with respect to the hyperaddition +. If is a semihypergroup, then is called a semihyperring.
- (2)
Krasner hyperring, if is a canonical hypergroup and is a semigroup such that 0 is a zero element (called also absorbing element), that is, for all , we have , and the multiplication · is distributive over the hyperaddition +.
On a hyperring
R, the
-relation was defined by Vougiouklis [
3] as follows:
Its transitive closure
is the smallest strongly regular relation on
R such that the associated quotient
is a classical ring, but it is not commutative in general. Later on Davvaz and Vougiouklis [
7] introduced the relation
in order to obtain a commutative quotient ring. First set
and then, for any natural number
n, we say that
if and only if there exist
, a permutation
and the elements
and the permutations
, for
, such that
and
, where
. Take then
. The quotient structure
is a commutative ring.
In Reference [
11] the authors defined a new relation on (semi)hyperrings, denoted by
, smaller than the
-relation, such that its transitive closure on a particular class of hyperrings is the smallest strongly regular relation endowing the quotient set with a ring structure. Let us remember here its definition. Select a constant
m, such that
. For two elements
x and
y in
R, consider
if and only if
, for
,
and
. If
is a hyperring such that
is commutative and
implies that there exists
for
such that
for all
, then the relation
is the smallest strongly regular equivalence on
R such that the quotient set
is a ring (not necessary commutative). Besides, since the quotient ring
is not commutative in general, similar to the role of the
-relation, in Reference [
12], a strongly regular relation, smaller than the
-relation, was defined in order to obtain commutative quotient rings as follows:
A new type of hyperring
was introduced, where the transitive closure
is strongly regular. Their multiplicative part is commutative and they satisfy the condition—for any nonempty subsets
of
R and a permutation
, if
and
, then there exist
, for
, such that
The quotient
is always a commutative ring [
15], while the quotient
is not commutative in general [
12]. Actually, if
is an
m-idempotent hyperring satisfying relation (
2), then
is the smallest strongly regular equivalence relation on
R such that the quotient
is a commutative ring. In Reference [
12], it is shown that the four fundamental relations defined on hyperrings are not equal in general, but for all
m-idempotent Krasner hyperrings, it holds
. Moreover, it is proved that
on
m-idempotent hyperrings satisfying relation (
2), which states that the relation
is a new representation for the
-relation on
m-idempotent hyperrings satisfying relation (
2).
3. -Parts and Transitivity of the -Relation
Generally, the
-relation is not transitive [
12], as well as the relations
,
,
, or
, so there is the necessity to find a tool, a method to show when these relations are transitive. Koskas was the first to deal with this problem, which was resolved in Reference [
6] by introducing the notion of complete parts on (semi)hypergroups. A nonempty subset
A of a semihypergroup
is called a complete part of
H, if
implies
, for any nonzero natural number
n and any elements
. In particular, the equivalence class
of any element of
H is a complete part of
H.
The transitivity property of the
-relation was studied by Anvariyeh et al. [
16], using complete parts on hyperrings. A nonempty subset
M of ahyperring
is a complete part of
R if from
it follows that
, for
,
and
.
Next
-parts [
17] were introduced on hyperrings to show when the
-relation [
7] is transitive. A nonempty subset
M of a hyperring
R is an
-part, if for every
,
,
,
and
, there is
where
.
Moreover, the
m-complete parts [
18] were defined with respect to the transitivity of the
-relation. In this case, a nonempty subset
M of
R is an
m-complete part if
implies that
, for a constant
.
In this section, the -part of a hyperring R is introduced in order to establish a condition for transitivity of the -relation. In this regard, some properties of -parts and some of their differences from complete parts, m-complete parts and -parts are presented.
Definition 2. Let M be a nonempty subset of a hyperring R. We say that M is an -part, if implies , for every , and .
To start with, a characterization of -parts is stated.
Proposition 1. Let R be a hyperring. The following conditions are equivalent:
- (i)
A nonempty subset M of R is a -part.
- (ii)
For any with the property it follows that .
- (iii)
For any with the property it follows that .
Proof. Let M be a -part of R and for and . Hence there exist , and such that and . Since , it follows that and so .
Let
such that
. Thus there exist
,
such that
,
and
. The following implications hold:
Now, let M be a nonempty subset of R. If , then there exists . For and every , we have . Thus and . By the hypothesis, it follows that and so . Therefore, M is an -part of R. □
Example 1. Consider the hyperring as follows:and define for every . Then, and for all . By Proposition 1, we can see that is a -part, but is not a -part of R, for any . Proposition 2. Every α-part is a -part, for every .
Proof. Proposition 1 is similarly valid for the
-relation and
-parts ([
15]). Therefore, the proof is completed because
. □
In the following example we can see that the converse of Proposition 2 is not generally valid:
Example 2. In the hyperring R defined in Example 1, the set is a -part, but it is not an α-part because , with , while and .
Proposition 3. Every -part is an m-complete part, for every .
Proof. It follows immediately by using in the definition of -parts. □
The following example shows that the converse of Proposition 3 is not valid. Moreover, we can see that .
Example 3. On the set define the following hyperoperations Then is a noncommutative semihyperring. Put , hence , for every . Thus, implies , and so is a 2-complete part of R. But, and so , while . Therefore, is not a -part of R. Moreover, we have and , which implies that .
It is easy to see that Proposition 1 is valid also to characterize complete parts with respect to the -relation on hyperrings. That is, a nonempty subset M is a complete part if and only if, for any such that it follows that , equivalently with, for any such that it follows that .
Example 4. Consider the hyperring R in Example 1 and the subset . It can be seen that M is a complete part and also a -part, but is not an α-part, since , but .
Comparing the definitions of the complete parts and
m-complete parts, it is easy to see that a complete part of every (semi)hyperring is an
m-complete part. But the converse implication is not generally true [
18]. Besides, from the following example, we can state that not all
-parts are complete parts.
Example 5. Consider the following hyperoperations on the set : Then, is a semihyperring. We have for all , and . Hence, is an m-complete part and also a -part, but it is not a complete part of R since , but .
Example 6. Consider the hyperring in Example 3, where is not a -part, but it is a complete part of R since .
By the above mentioned examples about various type of complete parts in a hyperring, the connections between complete parts,
m-complete parts,
-parts and
-parts in hyperrings may be represented as in
Figure 1.
Theorem 1. Let R be an m-idempotent hyperring (for ) satisfying condition (2). Then a nonempty subset M of R is a -part if and only if M is an α-part of R. Proof. By Proposition 2, every -part is a -part.
Now, let
M be a
-part such that
, for
,
,
, and arbitrary elements
. Since
R is an
m-idempotent hyperring, it follows that
for every
, thus
and
for every
. Set
and
. Thus we have
and by condition (
2) there exist
(and
) such that
. So
and we have
because
M is an
-part. Hence,
, which means that
M is an
-part. □
Now we are starting the process of finding conditions under which the
-relation is transitive. For this, first we define the following set for every element
x in
R and
.
Then, we obtain a different characterization of the set .
Lemma 1. , for every .
Proof. For any arbitrary elements such that , there exist , and such that and . Thereby there exists such that , that is, . On the other hand, if , then there exists such that for , , and , which means that . This completes the proof. □
Theorem 2. Let R be a hyperring. If is transitive, then , for every .
Proof. If is transitive, then . By Lemma 1, we have , equivalently with if and only if . □
The next result states a necessary condition for the set to be a -part of R.
Theorem 3. Let R be a hyperring and . If , then is a -part of R.
Proof. Let and such that and take . Hence, there exists such that which implies that . Then . Also, and thus . It follows that , implying that . This proves that is a -part of R. □
In the next result the transitivity of the -relation is discussed.
Theorem 4. Let R be hyperring and . If is a -part, then is transitive.
Proof. Let such that and . Since , by Lemma 1, it follows that . And using once again Lemma 1 we obtain , implying . Therefore, is transitive. □
Summarizing the above theorems we can discuss the transitivity property of the -relation on hyperrings by the next result.
Corollary 1. Let R be a hyperring. Then the following statements are equivalent:
- (1)
The -relation is transitive;
- (2)
, for all ;
- (3)
The set is a -part of R, for every .
4. -Complete Hyperrings
In this section, the concept of -complete hyperrings is introduced by meaning of the -relation and some characterizations are provided using properties of -parts. We present several examples that illustrate the fact that -complete hyperrings are different from -complete hyperrings and -complete hyperrings.
Let recall first the definition of n-complete hyperrings, -complete hyperrings and -complete hyperrings.
For an arbitrary natural number
n, a hyperring
R is said to be an
n-complete hyperring ([
17]) if
for all
and
.
R is called an
-complete hyperring [
17] if, for all
,
,
and
with
, there is
where
.
For any natural number
m,
, the hyperring
R is an
-complete hyperring if
for all
and
.
Similarly, we can define the concept of -complete hyperrings based on -relation as follows.
Definition 3. For any natural number m, , we say that a (semi)hyperring R is -complete, if it satisfies the conditionfor any , arbitrary elements and an arbitrary permutation . Example 7. Consider the hyperring in Example 1. We can see thatfor arbitrary , and . So, R is a -complete hyperring. Example 8. Consider now the semihyperring in Example 3. Since and , it follows that and so Therefore R is not -complete.
Corollary 2. Every -complete hyperring is a -complete hyperring.
Proof. Let
R be an
-complete hyperring. For all
, take
elements in
R,
the identical permutation, and
. Then
and
, where
. Hence,
Clearly, . This completes the proof. □
Generally, a -complete hyperring is not an -complete hyperring, as illustrated by the following example.
Example 9. Consider the hyperring R in Example 1. We know by Example 7 that R is an -complete hyperring. Since we have , it follows that Hence the hyperring R is not -complete.
For any
m,
, we say that a hyperring
R is
strongly m-idempotent, if
, for every
. It is known [
12] that
in any
m-idempotent hyperring satisfying condition (
2). Then, we can present the converse case of Corollary 2.
Theorem 5. Any strongly m-idempotent hyperring satisfying condition (2) that is -complete is also an -complete hyperring, for every . Proof. Let
R be a strongly
m-idempotent hyperring satisfying condition (
2) and such that
R is
-complete. For every
,
,
,
and
, let
. This means that there exists
such that
. Since
R is a strongly
m-idempotent hyperring, it follows that
Put
and
. Then, by condition (
2), there exist
for every
(and
for
) such that
Therefore, . This concludes that R is an -complete hyperring. □
In the following, we discuss the relationship between -complete hyperrings and -complete hyperrings.
Corollary 3. Every -complete hyperring is an -complete hyperring.
Proof. The proof follows immediately from the definition of a -complete hyperring, taking the permutation . □
Clearly if R is a commutative hyperring, then we have and so any -complete hyperring is -complete. But the converse of Corollary 3 is not valid in general, as shown in the following example.
Example 10. Consider the hyperring R in Example 3. By Example 8, we know that R is not a -complete hyperring. Besides we have or or or , for all and . On the other side, one founds that , , and . Hence, , meaning that R is an -complete hyperring.
We conclude this study with a characterization of -complete hyperrings based on the notion of -parts.
Theorem 6. A hyperring R is -complete if and only if for all where , and .
Proof. Let
R be a
-complete hyperring and take an arbitrary
. Then
Moreover, if , then , because . Hence, and so .
Conversely, by hypothesis we have
Therefore, R is a -complete hyperring. □
Theorem 7. Let R be a -complete hyperring for any m, . Then is a -part of R, for every , and .
Proof. For
and
, let
. Then there exists
. For every
, with
, we have
. Hence,
and there by
which implies that
is a
-part of
R. □