Chains of subsemigroups (Q2014292)

The authors define the \textit{length} of a semigroup \(S\) to be the largest number of non-empty subsemigroups of \(S\) in a chain (under inclusion) minus 1. This definition coincides with the definition of the length of a subgroup chain in the literature. The length of a chain of subgroups is bounded by the logarithm of the order of the group. But a finite semigroup can have a length up to one less than its order. The authors prove that the length of the full transformation semigroup on a finite set, of the semigroup of all order-preserving transformations on a finite totally ordered set and of the general linear semigroups on a finite-dimensional vector space over the Galois field \(\mathrm{GF}(q)\) of order \(q\) has lower bound. The authors provide a formula for the length of an arbitrary finite inverse or completely regular semigroup in terms of the lengths of its maximal subgroups and its numbers of \(\mathcal{L}\)- and \(\mathcal{R}\)-classes. The technique for producing long chains also gives lower bounds for the number of subsemigroups of certain semigroups.