GRAPH EXPANSIONS OF RIGHT CANCELLATIVE MONOIDS (Q4335558)

The relation \({\mathcal R}^*\) on a monoid \(M\) is a natural generalisation of Green's relation \(\mathcal R\) and coincides with \(\mathcal R\) if \(M\) is regular. A monoid \(M\) in which every \(\mathcal R^*\)-class contains an idempotent is called left abundant; if in addition the idempotents of \(M\) commute, that is, \(E(M)\) is a semilattice, then \(M\) is left adequate. Regular monoids are obviously left abundant and inverse monoids are left adequate. Many of the well known results of regular and inverse semigroup theory have analogues for left abundant and left adequate monoids, or at least to special classes thereof. This paper develops a construction of left adequate monoids from the Cayley graph of a presentation of a right cancellative monoid. Monoids constructed in this way belong to the class of proper left ample (formerly proper left type \(A\)) monoids, a widely studied class which contains all \(E\)-unitary inverse monoids. This technique yields the `largest' left ample monoid with a given set of generators and given maximum right cancellative image. In particular a new description of the free left ample monoid on a set \(X\) is obtained. In the last section of the paper the author shows that graph expansions can be used to define a functor from the category of \(X\)-generated right cancellative monoids to the category of \(X\)-generated proper left ample monoids. Further, this functor is a left adjoint of the functor that takes a left ample monoid to its maximum right cancellative image.