Terseness: minimal idempotent generating sets for \(K(n,r)\) (Q1402904)

Let \(T_n\) be the full transformation semigroup on the set \(X_n=\{1,2,\dots,n\}\). For \(\alpha\in T_n\), let \(\text{ran}(\alpha)\) denote the range of \(\alpha\) and for \(1\leq r\leq n\), define a subsemigroup \(K(n,r)\) of \(T_n\) by \(K(n,r)=\{\alpha\in T_n:|\text{ran}(\alpha)|\leq r\}\). If \(U\) is a generating set of a semigroup \(S\), the `terseness' of \(U\) is defined to be the minimum positive integer \(k\) such that \(S=U^k\). It is known that \(K(n,r)\) is idempotent generated and the authors show that if \(1<r<n\), then there exist rank-\(r\) elements of \(K(n,r)\) which cannot be expressed as the product of two idempotents of \(K(n,r)\). As a consequence, any idempotent generating set of \(K(n,r)\) must have terseness at least three. In the main theorem, the authors prove that if \(r>1\) and if \(n\) is sufficiently large, then there is a minimal idempotent generating set of \(K(n,r)\) whose terseness is three. They also show that for any \(r\), if \(n>r\) and \(n>3\), then there exists a minimal idempotent generating set of \(K(n,r)\) whose terseness is greater than three.