Continuous Varieties of Metric and Quantitative Algebras

Abstract: A metric algebra is a metric variant of the notion of $\Sigma$-algebra, first introduced in universal algebra to deal with algebras equipped with metric structures such as normed vector spaces. In this paper, we showed metric versions of the variety theorem, which characterizes strict varieties (classes of metric algebras defined by metric equations) and continuous varieties (classes defined by a continuous family of basic quantitative inferences) by means of closure properties. To this aim, we introduce the notion of congruential pseudometric on a metric algebra, which corresponds to congruence in classical universal algebra, and we investigate its structure.