Theory of decomposition in semigroups (Q1070637)

Let S be an Abelian Hausdorff topological semigroup with a unit element e. The authors call S Hungarian if (i) S is first countable, (ii) the set of associates of any element x (a is an associate of b, \(a\sim b\), if \(a=bc\) and \(b=ad\) for some c,d) is closed, (iii) the set of divisors of any element of the factor semigroup \(S^*(=S/\sim)\) is a compact subset of \(S^*\) and (iv) if \(s\sim t\), then \(s=tu\) for some unit u. Their main result is an abstract version of the classical theorem of Hinčin on the decomposition of probability distributions on the line. They have proven that in a Hungarian semigroup S, if \(P\subset S\) is a given subset (such that if \(x\in P\) then P contains all associates of x), then every element of S is the product of a completely reducible element (that is, an at most countable product of elements from P) and an element y which cannot be written as \(y=xz\) such that x is completely reducible and z is not an associate of y.