Near prequantales and applications to star and semistar operations and ideal and module systems

We show that a generalization of the theory of quantales and prequantales provides a noncommutative and nonassociative abstract ideal theoretic setting for the theories of star operations, semistar operations, semiprime operations, ideal systems, and module systems, and conversely the latter theories motivate new results in the theory of quantales and prequantales. Applications include representation theorems for precoherent prequantales and multiplicative semilattices; characterizations of simple commutative quantales and simple multiplicative lattices; a construction of the largest finitary nucleus smaller than a given nucleus on a precoherent prequantale; a construction of the smallest semistar operation extending a given star operation on an integral domain; and two potentially useful definitions of tight closure for non-Noetherian commutative rings of prime characteristic.