Dedekind-MacNeille and related completions: subfitness, regularity, and Booleanness

Abstract

Completions play an important r\^ole for studying structure by supplying elements that in some sense ``ought to be." Among these, the Dedekind-MacNeille completion is of particular importance. In 1968 Janowitz provided necessary and sufficient conditions for it to be subfit or Boolean. Another natural separation axiom connected to these is regularity. We explore similar characterizations of when closely related completions are subfit, regular, or Boolean. We are mainly interested in the Bruns-Lakser, ideal, and canonical completions, which (unlike the Dedekind-MacNeille completion) satisfy stronger forms of distributivity. The first two are widely used in pointfree topology, while the latter is of crucial importance in the semantics of modal logic.