Zero-divisor graphs of nilpotent-free semigroups. (Q1947194)

All semigroups of this paper are commutative, reduced and have an absorbing element \(0\). The authors introduce the concept of an Armendariz map between two semigroups and show that an Armendariz map preserves many graph properties, e.g., the diameter, the girth and the clique number, where a surjective map \(\sigma\colon S\to T\) is called Armendariz, if for any \(s,s'\in S\), \(\sigma(s)=0\) iff \(s=0\) holds, and \(\sigma(s)\sigma(s')=0\) iff \(ss'=0\) holds in \(S\). The authors show that for an Armendariz map \(\sigma\colon S\to T\), there is a unique Armendariz map \(\tau\colon T\to E(S)\) such that \(\tau\sigma\colon S\to E(S)\) is the natural map sending \(s\) to \([s]\), where \(E(S)\) consists of the equivalence classes [s] with \([s]=\{t\in S\mid\text{ann}(t)=\text{ann}(s)\}\). Then the authors use the results to give relationships between the zero-divisor graph of a ring, a polynomial ring, and the annihilating-ideal graph. The authors also study the zero-divisor graphs of certain topological spaces, prime spectra, maximal spectra, tensor-product semigroups, and the semigroup of ideals under addition (some thing like the comaximal ideal graph of a ring), and obtain unified structure theorems relating ring-theoretic and topological properties to graph-theoretic invariants of the corresponding graphs.