Continuous semigroup structures on \(\mathbb R\), cancellative semigroups and bands (Q2350953)

The real line \(\mathbb R\) with the natural topology is a topological group with the ordinal addition \(+\), and Aczél showed that it is a unique continuous group operation on \(\mathbb R\) up to isomorphism. In this paper, the authors classify cancellative topological semigroups on \(\mathbb R\) and ordered topological bands on \(\mathbb R\). Let \(S=(S,\ast)\) be a semigroup. \(S\) is called \textit{cancellative} if both the left transformation and the right transformation are injective. \(S\) is called \textit{ordered} if \(S\) is a semigroup with a partial order \(\leq\) on \(S\) such that for each \(x,y,z\in S\) if \(x\leq y\), then \(z\ast x\leq z\ast y\) and \(x\ast z\leq y\ast z\). It is known that a cancellative topological semigroup on \(\mathbb R\) is an ordered semigroup. They show, in this paper, that there exist exactly three cancellative topological semigroups on \(\mathbb R\) up to isomorphism. In fact, there are a group isomorphic to \(({\mathbb R},+)\) and semigroups isomorphic to \(({\mathbb R}_+,+)\) and \(({\mathbb R}_1,+)\), where \({\mathbb R}_+=\{x\in{\mathbb R}:x>0\}\) and \({\mathbb R}_1=\{x\in{\mathbb R}:x>1\}\). Furthermore, they study when an ordered topological semigroup \((S,\ast)\) is a \textit{band} (an \textit{idempotent semigroup}), that is, \(S\) has the property that \(x\ast x=x\) for each \(x\in S\). In this case, they prove that there are exactly 11 distinct ordered topological bands on \(\mathbb R\) up to order-preserving isomorphism, exactly 8 distinct ordered topological bands on \(\mathbb R\) up to isomorphism, and exactly 5 distinct ordered topological bands up to isomorphism and anti-isomorphism.