The rank of the semigroup of all order-preserving transformations on a finite fence (Q2272621)

On the set \(\bar{n}=\{1, 2, \cdots, n\}\), a special partial order \(\preceq\) called the \textit{zigzag} order is considered and the pair \((\bar{n},\preceq)\) is called a (finite) \textit{fence}. In this paper, the authors study the semigroup \(\mathscr{TF}_n\) of all order preserving transformations on a finite fence. Given an arbitrary full transformation \(\alpha\), they characterise when \(\alpha\in \mathscr{TF}_n\). Using this, they provide a formula for the number of idempotent elements in the semigroup \(\mathscr{TF}_n\). Further, the rank of the semigroup \(\mathscr{TF}_n\) is explored in detail and a minimal sized set of generators of \(\mathscr{TF}_n\) is described. Given the semigroup \(\mathscr{TF}_n\), the exact value for the rank of the semigroup is obtained in Theorem 3.7 through a series of lemmas wherein the cases when \(n\) is odd and \(n\) is even is considered separately.