On residually thin hypergroups (Q2300477)

A hypergroup \((H,\odot)\) is a nonempty set \(H\) with a function \(\odot: H \times H \to 2^H\) satisfying certain axioms analogous to groups. Roughly speaking, hypergroups generalize groups by allowing group operation to be ``multi-valued''. For instance, for a group \(G\) and its subgroup \(H\), the set of double cosets of \(H\) in \(G\) is equipped with hypergroup structure as follows: \[ (HaH)\odot (HbH):=\{HcH \mid c \in aHb\}. \tag{1}\] This hypergroup is denoted by \(G\sslash H\). A hypergroup \(H\) has a unique element \(e\) such that \(h*e=e*h=\{h\}\) for any \(h \in H\), and each element \(a \in H\) has a unique ``inverse'' \(a^*\) in the sense that \(e \in (a\odot a^*) \cap (a^*\odot a)\). For a hypergroup \(H\), a nonempty subset \(F\subseteq H\) is said to be \textit{closed} if \(a^*b \subseteq F\) for any \(a, b \in F\). A closed subset \(F \subseteq H\) is said to be \textit{normal} in \(H\) if \(Fa \subseteq aF\) for any \(a \in H\). If \(F\) is a closed subset of a hypergroup \(H\), one can define the quotient hypergroup \(H\sslash F\) similar to (1). A hypergroup \(H\) is said to be \textit{thin} if \(a^*a=\{e\}\) for any \(a \in H\), and \(H\) is \textit{residually thin} if \(H\) has a chain of closed subsets \[F_0=\{1\}\subseteq \cdots \subseteq F_{i-1}\subseteq F_i \subseteq \cdots \subseteq F_n=H \] such that the hypergroup \(F_i\sslash F_{i-1}\) is thin for each \(i \in \{1,\dots,n\}\). The authors' first main result states that a hypergroup \(H\) is residually thin if and only if \(H\) contains a residually thin normal closed subset \(F\) such that \(H\sslash F\) is residually thin. The second main result states that finite hypergroups are residually thin if all of their elements \(a\) satisfy \(aa^*a=\{a\}\).