Minimal varieties of residuated lattices

In this paper we investigate the atomic level in the lattice of subvarieties of residuated lattices. In particular, we give infinitely many commutative atoms and construct continuum many non-commutative, representable atoms that satisfy the idempotent law; this answers Problem 8.6 of 12]. Moreover, we show that there are only two commutative idempotent atoms and only two cancellative atoms. Finally, we study the connections with the subvariety lattice of residuated bounded-lattices. We modify the construction mentioned above to obtain a continuum of idempotent, representable minimal varieties of residuated bounded-lattices and illustrate how the existing construction provides continuum many covers of the variety generated by the three-element non-integral residuated bounded-lattice.In Celebration of the Sixtieth Birthday of Ralph N. McKenzieReceived August 1, 2003; accepted in final form April 27, 2004.