Congruences on *-regular semigroups (Q1410427)

By a *-regular semigroup \(S\) the authors mean a semigroup with involution * admitting a Moore-Penrose inverse; that is, for each \(a\in S\) there exists a (necessarily unique) solution \(x\) to the equations \(axa=a\), \(xax=x\), \((ax)^*=ax\), \((xa)^*=xa\) which is denoted by \(x=a^+\). A *-congruence on \(S\) is a congruence of the algebra \((S,\cdot,{}^*,{}^+)\) (or equivalently on \((S,\cdot,{}^*)\)). The paper develops a kernel-trace approach to such congruences analogous to the kernel-trace approach in inverse and regular semigroup theory. The role of the idempotents in this theory is played by the projections, that is, the idempotents which are fixed by the involution. Some results for the congruence lattice are also obtained; for example, a *-analogue \(T^*\) of the trace relation is considered and shown to be a complete congruence on the lattice of all *-congruences.