On semidirectly closed pseudovarieties of aperiodic semigroups (Q5939906)

The reviewer considered the problem of determining all pseudovarieties of semigroups which are closed under semidirect product, reduced the problem in the aperiodic case to the study of four specific intervals, and proposed a method to study such intervals while conjecturing their triviality [Finite semigroups and universal algebra, World Scientific, Singapore (1994; Zbl 0844.20039)]. Two of the intervals in question are \([{\mathbf V}^*(B_2),\mathbf{ER}\cap\mathbf{LR}]\) and \([{\mathbf V}^*(B_2^1),\mathbf{ER}\cap\mathbf{A}]\), where \({\mathbf V}^*(S)\) denotes the pseudovariety closed under semidirect product generated by a semigroup \(S\), \(B_2\) is the five-element Brandt aperiodic semigroup, \(\mathbf{ER}\) and \(\mathbf{LR}\) are, respectively, the pseudovarieties of all finite semigroups whose idempotent-generated submonoids and local submonoids are \(\mathcal R\)-trivial, and \(\mathbf A\) represents the pseudovariety of all finite aperiodic semigroups. The paper explores the suggested method to show that three of the intervals are not only nontrivial but actually each contain a chain of pseudovarieties closed under semidirect product isomorphic to the chain of real numbers. For the first of the above intervals, the result is established by exhibiting an infinite family of finite semigroups \(S_n\) in \(\mathbf{ER}\cap\mathbf{LR}\) which are divisible by \(B_2\) and such that none of them belongs to the pseudovariety closed under semidirect product containing the others. These semigroups are borrowed from a paper by \textit{M. V. Volkov} and the reviewer [Int. J. Algebra Comput. 8, No. 3, 399-430 (1998; Zbl 0970.20031)] where the same technique is used to study intervals of pseudovarieties. The second interval is handled by adjoining an identity to each of the semigroups \(S_n\).