On topological semigroups of matrix units (Q2491198)

Let \(S\) be a semigroup, let \(I_{\lambda }\) be a set of cardinality \(\lambda \geq 2\) and let \(\omega \) denote the first infinite ordinal. On the set \(B_{\lambda }(S)=I_{\lambda }\times S^{1}\times I_{\lambda }\cup \{0\}\) one can define the semigroup operation ``\(\cdot \)'' as follows: \[ (\alpha ,a,\beta )\cdot (\gamma ,b,\delta )=\begin{cases} (\alpha ,ab,\delta), & \text{if }\beta =\gamma, \\ 0, & \text{if }\beta \neq \gamma, \end{cases} \] \((\alpha ,a,\beta )\cdot 0=0\cdot (\alpha ,a,\beta )=0\cdot 0=0\), for \(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\delta \in I_{\lambda }\) and \(a,b\in S^{1}\). The semigroup \(B_{\lambda }(S)\) is called a Brandt-Howie semigroup of weight \(\lambda \) over \(S\). If the semigroup \(S\) contains only one element, then \(B_{\lambda }(S)\) is the semigroup of \(I_{\lambda }\times I_{\lambda }\)-matrix units and it will be denoted by \(B_{\lambda }\). The authors show that if \(\lambda \geq \omega \), then there exists no compact (countably compact) semigroup topology on \(B_{\lambda }\) and every continuous homomorphism of the topological semigroup \(B_{\lambda }\) into a compact topological semigroup is annihilating. Moreover, they prove that if \(\lambda \) is a cardinal \(\geq 2\) and \(B_{\lambda }\) is a subsemigroup of a topological inverse semigroup \(S\), then \(B_{\lambda }\) is a closed subsemigroup of \(S\). Let \(\mathcal{S}\) be a class of topological semigroups. A semigroup \(S\in \mathcal{S}\) is called \(H\)-closed in \(\mathcal{S}\), if \(S\) is a closed subsemigroup of any topological semigroup \(T\in \mathcal{S}\) which contains \(S\) as subsemigroup. If \(\mathcal{S}\) coincides with the class of all topological semigroups, then the semigroup \(S\) is called \(H\)-closed. The \(H\)-closed semigroups are also called maximal. A Hausdorff topological (inverse) semigroup \((S,\tau )\) is said to be minimal if no Hausdorff semigroup (inverse) topology on \(S\) is strictly contained in \(\tau \). If \((S,\tau )\) is a minimal topological (inverse) semigroup, then \(\tau \) is called a minimal semigroup (inverse) topology. The authors study some \(H\)-closed minimal semigroup topologies on the infinite semigroup of matrix units.