On algorithmic problems for joins of pseudovarieties (Q5930161)

As the author says, this paper generalizes and clarifies his earlier paper [Int. J. Algebra Comput. 8, No. 2, 203-231, Addendum 233-234 (1998; Zbl 0942.20041)] where he has shown that the join of the pseudovariety \(\mathbf J\) of all finite \(\mathcal J\)-trivial semigroups with the pseudovariety \(\mathbf G\) of all finite groups has decidable membership. (Independently, the decidability of \({\mathbf J}\vee{\mathbf G}\) has been proved by \textit{J.~Almeida, A.~Azevedo} and \textit{M.~Zeitoun} [Int. J. Algebra Comput. 9, No. 1, 99-112 (1999; Zbl 1012.20054)].) For an element \(x\) of a finite semigroup, \(x^\omega\) denotes the idempotent power of \(x\) and \(x^{\omega-1}\) denotes the inverse of \(xx^\omega\) in the maximal subgroup for which the idempotent \(x^\omega\) serves as the identity. The main result of the paper under review provides sufficient conditions for the join \({\mathbf W}\vee{\mathbf V}\) with \({\mathbf W}\subseteq{\mathbf J}\) and \({\mathbf V}\subseteq\mathbf{CR}\), where \(\mathbf{CR}\) is the pseudovariety of all finite completely regular semigroups, to admit a recursive basis of pseudoidentities built by using only the multiplication and the operation \(x\mapsto x^{\omega-1}\). (The relation to the membership problem is that if such a basis exists and the pseudovarieties \(\mathbf W\) and \(\mathbf V\) are recursively enumerable then \({\mathbf W}\vee{\mathbf V}\) has decidable membership.) For example, the conditions hold if the word problem for implicit operations on \(\mathbf W\) is decidable and \({\mathbf V}={\mathbf G}\), or \(\mathbf V\) is the pseudovariety of all finite Abelian groups, or \(\mathbf V\) is locally finite and has a computable bound on the size of its free finitely generated objects. In particular, the join \({\mathbf J}\vee{\mathbf G}\) has a recursive basis of the specified form while it has no finite pseudoidentity basis as was shown by \textit{P.~G.~Trotter} and the reviewer [Semigroup Forum 52, No. 1, 83-91 (1996; Zbl 0845.20047)]. Similar techniques are applied to show the decidability of idempotent pointlikes or \(n\)-pointlikes for the joins \({\mathbf W}\vee{\mathbf V}\) with \({\mathbf W}\subseteq{\mathbf J}\) and \({\mathbf V}\subseteq\mathbf{CR}\).