Pseudocharacters on free semigroups (Q1264938)

A real function \(f\) from a semigroup \(S\) is called a pseudocharacter if there exists a real number \(\varepsilon>0\) such that \(| f(xy)-f(x)-f(y)|\leq\varepsilon\) for all \(x,y\in S\) and \(f(x^n)=nf(x)\) for all \(x\in S\) and all positive integers \(n\). This paper investigates pseudocharacters on free semigroups. It is well-known that any pseudocharacter on a free semigroup with one generator is a character. Let \(S\) be a free semigroup over a non-singleton set. An element \(s\in S\) is called simple if \(s\neq t^n\) for all \(t\in S\) and all integers \(n>1\). For \(s,t\in S\) we say that \(s\) and \(t\) are conjugate if \(s=t\) or there exist \(a,b\in S\) with \(s=ab\) and \(t=ba\). For \(s\in S\), let \(H(s)\) denote the set of all proper prefixes of \(s\) and let \(K(s)\) denote the set of all proper suffixes of \(s\). It is shown that any conjugacy class containing a simple element of \(S\) contains a simple element \(s\in S\) with \(H(s)\cap K(s)=\emptyset\). Let \(P\) be a set of representatives of all conjugacy classes containing a simple element of \(S\) such that \(H(s)\cap K(s)=\emptyset\) for any \(s\in P\). For a positive integer \(i\), let \(P_i\) be the subset of \(P\) consisting of all words of length \(i\). It is proved that any bounded real function \(\varphi\) on \(P_n\), for \(n>1\), can be extended to a pseudocharacter \(f_\varphi\) on \(S\) with \(f_\varphi(s)=0\) for all \(s\in\bigcup_{i<n}P_i\). Any pseudocharacter has a unique decomposition into a sum of a character and some pseudocharacters that vanish on \(P_1\). This characterizes pseudocharacters on free semigroups.