Finitely presented groups and completely regular semigroups (Q1917389)

A completely regular semigroup is a semigroup which is a union of groups. Every such semigroup has a maximal group homomorphic image. This paper has as its goal the proof of the following theorem. Every finitely presented group is the greatest group homomorphic image of a finitely presented completely regular semigroup which has a solvable word problem and whose maximal subgroups are free groups or one-relator groups. In order to reach this theorem the authors consider the variety \(\mathbf{CR}\) of completely regular semigroups as a subvariety of \({\mathbf U}\), the variety of unary semigroups (semigroups with an inversion operation \(x\mapsto x^{-1}\)). For a set \(X\), if \(U(X)\) is the free unary semigroup on \(X\), there is a least fully invariant congruence \(\rho_{\mathbf{CR}}\) such that \(F\mathbf{CR}(X)=U(X)/\rho_{\mathbf{CR}}\in\mathbf{CR}\) is the free completely regular semigroup on \(X\). Then, if \(\kappa\) is a relation on \(U(X)\) one can find a corresponding congruence \(\kappa_{\mathbf{CR}}^*\) on \(F\mathbf{CR}(X)\). The bulk of the paper is devoted to careful computations involving \(\rho_{\mathbf{CR}}\) and \(\kappa_{\mathbf{CR}}^*\) and their interactions. They consider a completely regular semigroup presentation \(\langle X\mid\kappa_{\mathbf{CR}}\rangle\) where \(\kappa\) is a finite relation on \(U(X)\) of the form \(\{(u_i,u_i(u_i)^{-1})\mid i=1,\dots,n\}\). On the way to the main theorem they establish the solvability of the word problem for completely regular semigroups with such presentations. Theorem. The word problem for \(F\mathbf{CR}(X)/\kappa_{\mathbf{CR}}^*\) is solvable.