On the Burnside problem for semigroups of matrices in the \((\max,+)\) algebra (Q1914078)

A dioid \((D,+,\cdot)\) is a semiring with absorbing zero and identity such that \((D,+)\) is a commutative and idempotent semigroup. Special examples are \(R_{\max}=(\mathbb{R}\cup\{-\infty\},\max,+)\) for the real numbers \(\mathbb{R}\) and \(Q_{\max}=(\mathbb{Q}\cup\{-\infty\},\max,+)\) for the rational numbers \(\mathbb{Q}\). Denote by \(a\leq b\Leftrightarrow a+b=b\) the natural partial order on \(D\), and by \(D^{n\times n}\) the multiplicative semigroup of all \(n\times n\)-matrices over \(D\). A semigroup \((S,\cdot)\) is torsion if for each \(s\in S\) there are natural numbers \(n\) and \(c\neq 0\) such that \(s^{n+c}=s^n\). The Burnside problem asks whether a finitely generated (f.g.) torsion semigroup is finite. The author gives a positive answer in the following cases. 1. Every f.g. torsion semigroup \(S\subseteq R^{n\times n}_{\max}\) is finite. Moreover, it is decidable if a f.g. semigroup \(S\subseteq R^{n\times n}_{\max}\) is torsion. 2. If \(D\) is a commutative dioid such that for every \(x\in D\) the set \(\{y\in D\mid y\leq x\}\) is finite then every f.g. torsion semigroup \(S\subseteq D^{n\times n}\) is finite. 3. Every f.g. torsion semigroup \(S\subseteq PQ^{n\times n}_{\max}\) is finite. Here the semigroup \(PQ^{n\times n}_{\max}\) of all linear projective maps with rational entries is obtained as follows. On the semigroup \((R^{n\times n}_{\max},\cdot)\) define a congruence by \(M\cong M'\Leftrightarrow M=\lambda M'\) for some \(\lambda\in R_{\max}\setminus\{-\infty\}\). Let \(PR^{n\times n}_{\max}\) be the quotient semigroup, \(p:R^{n\times n}_{\max}\to PR^{n\times n}_{\max}\) the natural homomorphism and \(PQ^{n\times n}_{\max}=p(Q^{n\times n}_{\max})\). Also a counter-example is given to show that 3. does not hold for \(PR^{n\times n}_{\max}\) instead of \(PQ^{n\times n}_{\max}\). [Editor's note: Since the published version of this paper contains errors in the internal references due to a production error, a corrected version is placed on the Semigroup Forum home page \url{http://www.math.tulane.edu/SF.html} following the link under ``Corrigenda''].