Sandwich semigroups in locally small categories. I: Foundations (Q1991608)

The article develops a general theory of sandwich semigroups in locally small categories. The central concept partial semigroup is defined as a 5-tuple \((S,\cdot, I, \lambda, \rho)\) consisting of a class \(S\), a certain partial associative binary operation \(\cdot\) on some subclass of \(S\), a class \(I\) and functions \(\lambda,\rho: S\to I\) such that each \(S_{ij}=\{x\in S: x\lambda =i, x\rho =j\}\), \(i, j\in I\), is a set and \(x\cdot y\) (\(x, y\in S\)) is defined if and only if \(x\rho = y\lambda\). For a fixed element \(a\in S_{ji}\), \(S^a_{ij}=(S_{ij}, \star_a)\) where \(x \star y=xay\) for all \(x,y\in S_{ij}\), denotes the sandwich semigroup of \(S_{ij}\) with respect to \(a\). The element \(a\in S_{ji}\) is called sandwich regular if \(aS_{ij}a \subseteq \mathrm{Reg}(S)\). Some results on (von Neumann) regularity, stability and Green's relations on partial semigroups and on sandwich semigroups are obtained. The authors give thorough descriptions of regular and idempotent generated subsemigroups \(\mathrm{Reg}(S^a_{ij}\)) and \({\mathbb E}_a(S^a_{ij})\), respectively, of a sandwich semigroup \(S^a_{ij}\) under the assumption that \(a\) is a sandwich regular element. An element \(u\in T\) of a regular semigroup \(T\) is called a mid-identity if \(xuy=xy\) for all \(x,y\in T\). A regular semigroup \(T\) is MI-dominated if every idempotent of \(T\) is below some mid-identity (under the natural partial order on \(T\)). Lower bounds for the ranks (that is, for the minimal size of generating sets) of \(\mathrm{Reg}(S^a_{ij}\)) and \({\mathbb E}_a(S^a_{ij})\) are found. In the case when \(\mathrm{Reg}(S^a_{ij}\)) is MI-dominated, an exact formula for the rank are calculated. A condition under which \(\mathrm{Reg}(S^a_{ij}\)) is inverse as well as some aspects of the calculation of the rank of \(S^a_{ij}\) are discussed. Applications of this theory in the categories of all partial transformations, all full transformations and all injective partial transformations of sets are published in [the authors, ibid. 79, No. 3, Paper No. 76, 53 p. (2018; Zbl 1403.20070)].