Endomorphisms of free Steiner quasigroups

Abstract

A free Steiner quasigroup is a free object in the variety of Steiner quasigroups. Free Steiner quasigroups are characterised by the existence of a levelled construction that starts with a free base - that is, a set of elements none of which is a product of the others, and which generate the quasigroup. Then each element in a free Steiner quasigroup $M$ can be obtained as a term on the free base. We characterise homomorphisms between substructures of a free Steiner quasigroup where one generator is replaced by a term in the original generators. The characterisation depends on certain synctactic properties of the term in question.