Sandwich semigroups in locally small categories. II: Transformations (Q1991609)

The authors apply the general theory of sandwich semigroups developed in [the authors, ibid. 79, No. 3, Paper No. 75, 35 p. (2018; Zbl 1403.20069)] to the categories of all partial transformations, all full transformations and all injective partial transformations of sets. For sets \(X\), \(Y\) and a partial function \(a: Y\to X\), the sandwich semigroup \(\mathcal{PT}^a_{XY}\)=(\(\mathcal{PT}_{XY}, \star_a\)) consists of the set \(\mathcal{PT}_{XY}\) of all partial functions \(X\to Y\) with the operation \(f \star_a g=fag\) for all \(f,g\in \mathcal{PT}_{XY}\). An element \(a\) of a partial semigroup \(S\) is called \(\mathcal{R}\)-stable (\(\mathcal{L}\)-stable) if \(xa\mathcal{J}x\Rightarrow xa\mathcal{R}x\) (\(ax\mathcal{J}x\Rightarrow ax\mathcal{L}x\), respectively) for all \(x\in S\). An element is called stable if it is both \(\mathcal{R}\)-stable and \(\mathcal{L}\)-stable. The article focuses on describing Green's relations, preorders, regular elements, stability conditions and the rank (the minimal size of generating sets) of \(\mathcal{PT}^a_{XY}\) and \(\mathcal{T}^a_{XY}\) (the latter consisting of all full functions \(X\to Y\)). A structure theorem and formulae for the calculation of the size and the rank of a regular subsemigroup Reg(\(\mathcal{PT}^a_{XY}\)) are presented. The elements of the idempotent generated subsemigroup \({\mathbb E}_a(\mathcal{PT}^a_{XY})\) are also characterised and the idempotent rank of this subsemigroup calculated. The case of injective partial transformations is shortly discussed as well. For visualization purposes, egg-box diagrams are used.