Cryptic semigroup varieties. (Q2491191)

By definition, a semigroup (or monoid) is `cryptic' if Green's relation \(\mathcal H\) happens to be a congruence. In the main result of the paper, a complete and irredundant list of semigroups is established the members of which are `forbidden divisors' for being cryptic. This means that a semigroup \(S\) is cryptic if and only if no member of that list is among the divisors of \(S\). `Irredundant' here means that each member of the list has only cryptic proper divisors. The list is infinite and contains only finite semigroups, and its members naturally correspond to prime numbers. An analogous result is established for monoids. As applications, numerous results on the variety and pseudovariety level are established. For example, all minimal non-cryptic periodic semigroup varieties are found. Likewise, there are shown to be exactly three distinct maximal cryptic semigroup varieties contained in the variety \([x^n=x^{n+m}]\) for \(m,n\geq 2\). Analogous results for pseudovarieties are also obtained.