Strongly productive ultrafilters on semigroups (Q284670)

The finite products set FP\((\vec x)\) associated with a sequence \(\vec x=(x_n)_{n\in\omega}\) of elements of a multiplicative semigroup \(S\) is the set of elements of \(S\) that are products \(\prod_{i\in a}x_i\) taken in increasing order of indices for finite sets \(a\subseteq\omega\). An ultrafilter \(p\) on \(S\) is strongly productive if it has a basis consisting of finite products sets. In the case of additive notation, strongly summable ultrafilters are considered. The semigroup operation naturally extends to the set of all ultrafilters \(\beta S\) on \(S\). The study of strongly summable ultrafilters was started by Hindman in the case of the semigroup of positive integers and later this study was extended for arbitrary abelian groups. In the paper under review, the authors get generalizations of some of these results. They prove that if \(S\) is a commutative semigroup with well-founded universal semilattice of idempotents or a solvable inverse semigroup with well-founded universal semilattice of idempotents, then every strongly productive ultrafilter on \(S\) is idempotent. They also answer a question of Hindman and Legette Jones by proving that any very strongly productive ultrafilter on the free semigroup with countably many generators is sparse.