Implicit operations on finite \({\mathcal J}\)-trivial semigroups and a conjecture of I. Simon (Q2276995)

The pseudovariety J of finite \({\mathcal J}\)-trivial semigroups and its relationship to piecewise testable languages have been investigated, in particular, by \textit{H. Straubing} [Semigroup Forum 19, 107-110 (1980; Zbl 0435.20036)] and \textit{I. Simon} [Autom. Theor. Form. Lang., 2nd GI Conf., Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 33, 214-222 (1975; Zbl 0316.68034)]. The present paper is devoted to the topological semigroup of n-ary implicit operations on J; among other things, it is shown that this semigroup is generated by the n component projections together with the \(2^ n-1\) idempotents. This result implies the countability of the completion of the metric space \((A^*,d)\) over a finite alphabet A, where \(d(u,v)=2^{-r}\) for the largest integer r such that \(u,v\in A^*\) have the same subwords of length at most r.