Minimal lattice-subspaces

In this paper the existence of minimal lattice-subspaces of a vector lattice containing a subset of is studied (a lattice-subspace of is a subspace of which is a vector lattice in the induced ordering). It is proved that if there exists a Lebesgue linear topology on and is -closed (especially if is a Banach lattice with order continuous norm), then minimal lattice-subspaces with -closed positive cone exist (Theorem 2.5).

In the sequel it is supposed that is a finite subset of , where is a compact, Hausdorff topological space, the functions are linearly independent and the existence of finite-dimensional minimal lattice-subspaces is studied. To this end we define the function where . If is the range of and the convex hull of the closure of , it is proved:

(i)

There exists an -dimensional minimal lattice-subspace containing if and only if is a polytope of with vertices (Theorem 3.20).

(ii)

The sublattice generated by is an -dimensional subspace if and only if the set contains exactly points (Theorem 3.7).

This study defines an algorithm which determines whether a finite-dimensional minimal lattice-subspace (sublattice) exists and also determines these subspaces.