Homomorphic Relations and Goursat Lemma

Abstract

Over the past years various authors have investigated the famous elementary result in group theory called Goursat's lemma for characterizing the subgroups of the direct product $A\times B$ of two groups $A,B$. Given a homomorphic relation $\rho = (R,A,B)$ where $A$ and $B$ are groups and $R$ is a subgroup of $A\times B.$ What can one say about the structure of $\rho$. In 1950 Riguet proved a theorem that allows us to obtain a characterization of $\rho$ induces by examining the sections of the direct factors. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. A first and more concrete aim is to provide a containment relation property between homomorphic relation. Indeed if $\rho,\sigma$ are homomorphic relations, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for $\sigma\leq\rho$. A second and more abstract aim is to introduce a generalization of some notions in homological algebra. We define the concepts of $\theta$-exact. We also obtain some interesting results. We use these results to find a generalization of Lambek Lemma.