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We develop a unified approach to Gelfand and de Vries dualities for compact Hausdorff spaces, which is based on appropriate modifications of the classic results of Dieudonné (analysis), Dilworth (lattice theory), and Katětov and Tong (topology) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We generalize the Boolean power construction to the setting of compact Hausdorff spaces. This is done by replacing Boolean algebras with de Vries algebras (complete Boolean algebras enriched with proximity) and Stone duality with de Vries duality. For a compact Hausdorff space X and a totally ordered algebra A , we introduce the concept of a finitely valued normal function f : X → A . We show that the operations of A lift to the set FN ( X , A ) of all finitely valued normal functions, and that there is a canonical proximity relation ≺ on FN ( X , A ) . This gives rise to the de Vries power construction, which when restricted to Stone spaces, yields the Boolean power construction. We prove that de Vries powers of a totally ordered integral domain A are axiomatized as proximity Baer Specker A -algebras; that is, the pairs ( S , ≺ ) , where S is a torsion-free A -algebra generated by its idempotents which is a Baer ring, and ≺ is a proximity relation on S . We introduce the category of proximity Baer Specker A -algebras and proximity morphisms between them, and prove that this category is dually equivalent to the category of compact Hausdorff spaces and continuous maps. This provides an analogue of de Vries duality for proximity Baer Specker A -algebras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Boolean power S of a commutative ring R has the structure of a commutative R-algebra, and with respect to this structure, each element of S can be written uniquely as an R-linear combination of orthogonal idempotents so that the sum of the idempotents is 1 and their coefficients are distinct. In order to formalize this decomposition property, we introduce the concept of a Specker R-algebra, and we prove that the Boolean powers of R are up to isomorphism precisely the Specker Ralgebras. We also show that these algebras are characterized in terms of a functorial construction having roots in the work of Bergman and Rota. When R is indecomposable, we prove that S is a Specker R-algebra iff S is a projective R-module, thus strengthening a theorem of Bergman, and when R is a domain, we show that S is a Specker R-algebra iff S is a torsion-free R-module. For indecomposable R, we prove that the category of Specker R-algebras is equivalent to the category of Boolean algebras, and hence is dually equivalent to the category of Stone spaces. In addition, when R is a domain, we show that the category of Baer Specker R-algebras is equivalent to the category of complete Boolean algebras, and hence is dually equivalent to the category of extremally disconnected compact Hausdorff spaces. For totally ordered R, we prove that there is a unique partial order on a Specker R-algebra S for which it is an f-algebra over R, and show that S is isomorphic to the R-algebra of piecewise constant continuous functions from a Stone space X to R equipped with the interval topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]