Semi-affine structures on groups and semi-braces (Q6038542)

\textit{W. Rump} [Ann. Comb. 23, No. 2, 391--416 (2019; Zbl 1458.20025) described \textit{braces} in terms of \textit{affine structures on groups}. This fact allowed you to investigate isomorphism classes of braces having a fixed group as a multiplicative group and led to new advances in the brace theory. In this paper, the author introduces the notion of semi-affine structure on groups for describing \textit{semi-braces}, a more general structure including braces investigated by \textit{F. Catino} et al. [J. Algebra 483, 163--187 (2017; Zbl 1385.16035)] and \textit{E. Jespers} and \textit{A. van Antwerpen} [Forum Math. 31, No. 1, 241--263 (2019; Zbl 1456.16035)]. Specifically, given a group \(G=(B, \circ)\) with identity \(0\), a \textit{semi-affine structure on \(G\)} is an anti-homomorphism \(\sigma: B \to B^B\) from \(G\) to the set of all maps from \(B\) into itself satisfying the property \[ \text{ for all } a,b,c \in B \qquad \sigma_a(b \circ \sigma_b(c))=\sigma_a(b) \circ \sigma_{\sigma_a(b)}\sigma_a(c). \] If \(\sigma(B) \subseteq \mathrm{Sym}_B\) and \(\sigma_a(0)=0\), for every \(a \in B\), then \(\sigma\) is the Rump's affine structure on \(G\). It is proved that semi-affine structures of a given group \(G\) are in one-to-one correspondence with semi-braces having \(G\) as multiplicative structure. Moreover, semi-braces and semi-affine structures are equivalent as categories. They are examined a lot of examples, paying more attention to semi-affine structures related to \textit{bi-skew braces} (see [\textit{L. N. Childs}, New York J. Math. 25, 574--588 (2019; Zbl 1441.12001)]) and provided ones that do not belong to the classes of those already known. Finally, starting from two semi-affine structures \(\sigma^H\) and \(\sigma^K\) on two groups \(H\) and \(K\), respectively, it is shown how to construct a semi-affine structure \(\sigma^H \times \sigma^K\) on a group isomorphic to the Zappa product of \(H\) and \(K\).