Varieties minimal over representable varieties of lattice-ordered groups

Weinberg showed that the variety of abelian lattice-ordered groups is the minimal nontrivial variety in the lattice of varieties of lattice-ordered groups. Scrimger showed that the abelian variety of lattice-ordered groups has countably infinitely many nonrepresentable covering varieties, and it is now known that his varieties are the only nonrepresentable covers of the abelian variety.

In this paper, a variation of the method used to construct the Scrimger varieties is developed that is shown to produce every nonrepresentable cover of any representable variety. Using this variation, all nonrepresentable covers of any weakly abelian l-variety are specifically identified, as are the nonrepresentable covers of any l-metabelian representable l-variety. In both instances, such il-varieties have only countably infinitely many such covers.

Any nonrepresentable cover of a representable il-variety is shown to be a subvariety of a quasi-representable il-variety as defined by Reilly. The class of these quasi-representable l-varieties is shown to contain the well-known L_n l-varieties and to generalize many of their properties.