The existence of disjoint smallest ideals in the two natural products on \(\beta S\) (Q5939558)

Let \(g\) be the (discrete) free semigroup on two generators. Since it is noncommutative, there are two natural ways of extending the semigroup operation to \(\beta S\). The main result of the paper says that the minimal ideals of these two semigroups are disjoint. (It was known previously that each of these meets the closure of the other; see \textit{P. Anthony} [Semigroup Forum 48, 363-367 (1994; Zbl 0811.22001)].) An analogous result is shown for the two-generator free \textit{group}; this cannot be derived in a simple way from the semigroup case. According to an acknowledgment by the author, the results were suggested to her by D. Strauss; they fit nicely into the framework of the book ``Algebra in the Stone-Čech compactification: theory and applications'' (Berlin 1998; Zbl 0918.22001) by \textit{N. Hindman} and \textit{D. Strauss}.