On algebras with many symmetric operations.

Abstract

An n-ary operation f is called symmetric if, for all permutations π of {1, . . . , n}, it satisfies the identity f(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = f(xπ(1), xπ(2), . . . , xπ(n) ). We show that, for each finite algebra A, either it has symmetric term operations of all arities or else some finite algebra in the variety generated by A has two automorphisms without a common fixed point. We also show this two-automorphism condition cannot be replaced by a single fixed-point-free automorphism.