Abstract

We introduceself-divisibleultrafilters, which we prove to be precisely those$w$such that the weak congruence relation$\equiv _w$introduced by Šobot is an equivalence relation on$\beta {\mathbb Z}$. We provide several examples and additional characterisations; notably we show that$w$is self-divisible if and only if$\equiv _w$coincides with the strong congruence relation$\mathrel {\equiv ^{\mathrm {s}}_{w}}$, if and only if the quotient$(\beta {\mathbb Z},\oplus )/\mathord {\mathrel {\equiv ^{\mathrm {s}}_{w}}}$is a profinite group. We also construct an ultrafilter$w$such that$\equiv _w$fails to be symmetric, and describe the interaction between the aforementioned quotient and the profinite completion$\hat {{\mathbb Z}}$of the integers.