On idempotent-generated subsemigroups of principally ordered regular semigroups. (Q1434103)

An ordered regular semigroup \(S\) is said to be principally ordered if, for every \(x\in S\), there exists \(x^*=\max\{y\in S;\;xyx\leq x\}\). In a previous paper [ibid. 54, No. 2, 154-165 (1997; Zbl 0869.06010], the authors showed that the mapping \(^*\colon S\to S\) given by \(x\mapsto x^*\) is antitone in the sense that \(x\leq y\Rightarrow x^*\geq y^*\) when \(S\) is naturally ordered, that is when \(\leq\) extends the natural order \(\leq_n\) on the idempotents: (\(\forall e,f\in E(S)\)) \(e\leq_nf\Rightarrow e\leq f\). In this work they investigate the situation in which \(x\mapsto x^*\) is weakly isotone , i.e., (\(\forall e,f\in E(S)\)) \(e\leq f\Rightarrow e^*\leq f^*\). If \(e,f\) are comparable idempotents they study the *-subsemigroup generated by \(\{e,f\}\); this is the smallest subsemigroup containing \(e,f\) and is closed under the unary operation *.