On maximal subgroups of free idempotent generated semigroups. (Q1760350)

This paper is dedicated to proving the following theorems: (1) [(3)] Every group is a maximal subgroup of some free [regular] idempotent generated semigroup. (2) [(4)] If a group is \textit{finitely presented} [finite] then it is a maximal subgroup of some free [regular] idempotent generated semigroup arising from a \textit{finite} [regular] semigroup. The converse of (2) is also true. It is open if (4) holds for finitely presented groups not necessarily finite. Theorem 2 is proved as follows. Let \(G\) be a finitely presented group, \(G\) can be defined by a presentation \[ G=\langle a_1,\dots,a_p\mid b_1c_1=d_1,\dots,b_qc_q=d_q\rangle, \] where \(b_r,c_r,d_r\in\{a_1,\dots,a_p\}\), for all \(r=1,\dots,q\). Let \(m=1+2q\), \(n=1+p+2q\), \(I=\{1,\dots,m\}\) and \(J=\{1,\dots,n\}\). A certain set of idempotents \(\sigma_u\), for \(u=2,\dots,m\), and \(\tau_v\), for \(v=1,\dots,q\), is fixed in the semigroup \(B_{I,J}=T^{\mathrm{op}}_I\times T_J\) where \(T_J\) is the semigroup of all transformations in \(J\) and \(T^{\mathrm{op}}_I\) is the set \(T_I\) with the reverse product. Next, one takes the subsemigroup \(S\) of \(B_{I,J}\), \[ S=\langle R_{m,n};\sigma_u,\tau_v:u=2,\dots,m;\;v=1,\dots,q\rangle \] where \(R_{m,n}\) is the minimal ideal of \(B_{I,J}\) which is a band. This is idempotent generated. It is shown that \(G\) is isomorphic to a maximal subgroup \(H\) of \(IG(E(S))\), namely the \(\mathcal H\)-class of a certain element \(\rho_{11}\). This is done using the above presentation of \(G\) and a presentation of \(H\) computed in Theorem 5. Theorem 1 is proved in a similar manner, having in mind that the presentation of \(G\) may be infinite. The semigroup \(S\) constructed using this method is not regular. To prove Theorems 3 and 4, it is necessary to start by constructing an idempotent generated semigroup \(S\) which is now regular and then follow the same kind of argument as before. The authors report the importance of using GAP to test examples and conjectures.