No label defined (Q4025871)

This paper is concerned with the study of the power semigroups of finite semigroups from the point of view of pseudovarieties. It reviews the current information and also presents the author's new results. Let \({\mathcal P}(S)\) denote the power semigroup of a finite semigroup \(S\), and let \(V\) be a pseudovariety of finite semigroups, namely a class of finite semigroups which is closed under homomorphic images, subsemigroups and finitary direct products of finite semigroups, and \(PV\) the pseudovariety generated by the semigroups of the form \({\mathcal P}(S)\) with \(S\in V\). The following topics are discussed: (1) a relation between a pseudovariety and a system of identities, (2) local trivial pseudovarieties in which a semigroup \(S\) is called locally trivial if \(eSe\) with \(e^ 2=e\in S\) are trivial, (3) pseudovarieties of monoids, (4) pseudovarieties of permutative semigroups i.e. semigroups satisfying non-trivial permutation identities, (5) pseudovarieties of semigroups and varieties of languages, (6) non-permutative pseudovarieties. The last topic is the highlight of this paper which includes the new results with proof. This paper really gives a thorough survey and broad references and suggests problems and new paths for the study of pseudovarieties.