Amalgamated free products of inverse semigroups (Q5906307)

T. E. Hall first proved the strong amalgamation property for (the category of) inverse semigroups. As a consequence of this property, every inverse semigroup amalgam is embedded (``strongly and naturally'') in the corresponding amalgamated free product. Hall's original and later proofs of the amalgamation property did not involve amalgamated free products and since then considerable effort has been devoted to describing their structure and properties, keeping in mind their natural interest, applications to inverse semigroup presentations and alternative proofs of the strong amalgamation property. The initial work in this direction was done by the reviewer, who determined the structure of free products of inverse semigroups (that is, over amalgams with empty core). The direction taken in the paper under review was started by \textit{J. B. Stephen}, \textit{J. Meakin} and \textit{S. W. Margolis} and the reviewer [Glasg. Math. J. 33, No. 3, 373-387 (1991; Zbl 0742.20057)], where Stephen's graphical techniques for studying inverse semigroup presentations were applied to the case of free products. Here the author applies these graphical techniques to amalgamated free products in general, culminating in a new proof of the strong amalgamation property. The methods that are developed are also applied to study the properties of amalgamated free products. For instance, for a special amalgam of an inverse semigroup \(S\) over an inverse subsemigroup \(U\), the resulting semigroup is \(E\)-unitary if and only if \(S\) is \(E\)-unitary and is ``upwardly directed into \(U\)'', in the sense that if \(s\in S\) and \(u\in U\) have a greatest lower bound (under the natural partial order in \(S\)) then they have a common upper bound in \(U^1\). A final section notes some connections between this work and another important study of amalgamated free products of inverse semigroups, also using Stephen's graphical techniques, by \textit{P. Bennett} [J. Algebra 198, No. 2, 499-537 (1997; Zbl 0890.20042)].