# Construction of Inverse Completion/Natural Number Difference

## Natural Number Difference in Inverse Completion

Let $\struct {S, \circ}$ be a commutative semigroup which has cancellable elements.

Let $\struct {C, \circ {\restriction_C} } \subseteq \struct {S, \circ}$ be the subsemigroup of cancellable elements of $\struct {S, \circ}$, where $\circ {\restriction_C}$ denotes the restriction of $\circ$ to $C$.

Let $\struct {S \times C, \oplus}$ be the external direct product of $\struct {S, \circ}$ and $\struct {C, \circ {\restriction_C} }$, where $\oplus$ is the operation on $S \times C$ induced by $\circ$ on $S$ and $\circ {\restriction_C}$ on $C$.

Let $\boxtimes$ be the cross-relation on $S \times C$, defined as:

$\tuple {x_1, y_1} \boxtimes \tuple {x_2, y_2} \iff x_1 \circ y_2 = x_2 \circ y_1$

In the context of the natural numbers, the difference is defined as:

$n - m = p \iff m + p = n$

from which it can be seen that the above congruence can be understood as:

$\tuple {x_1, y_1} \boxtimes \tuple {x_2, y_2} \iff x_1 + y_2 = x_2 + y_1 \iff x_1 - y_1 = x_2 - y_2$

Thus this congruence defines an equivalence between pairs of elements which have the same difference.