Stuctures of ternary semigroup of mappings (Q2211369)

A nonempty set \(S\) together with a ternary operation \( (a,b,c) \mapsto abc\) is said to be a ternary semigroup if \((abc)de = a(bcd)e = ab(cde)\) for all \(a, b, c, d, e \in S\). The authors consider ternary semigroups of mappings and matrices. Let \(X\) and \(Y\) be two nonempty sets and \(T[X,Y]\) denote the set of all pairs \((p,q)\) where \(p\) is a mapping from \(X\) to \(Y\) and \(q\) is a mapping from \(Y\) to \(X\). The ternary operation on \(T[X,Y]\) is defined as follows: \((p_1,q_1)\diamond (p_2,q_2) \diamond (p_3,q_3) = (p_1\circ q_2 \circ p_3, q_1\circ p_2 \circ q_3)\). The left, right, completely regular and idempotent elements in \(T[X,Y]\) are characterized. \(T [X, Y ]\) is an idempotent ternary semigroup if either \(|X| = 1\) or \(|Y | = 1\). The authors characterize also the idempotent elements of the ternary semigroup \(M [m, n]\) of rectangular matrices over a field. This is the main result of the paper.