Malcev products of unipotent monoids and varieties of bands. (Q766199)

Completely regular semigroups -- semigroups that are unions of groups -- have long been studied as unary semigroups, where \(a^{-1}\) is the inverse of \(a\) in the maximal subgroup (its group \(\mathcal H\)-class) to which it belongs. The induced operation \(a^0\), associating to each element the identity of its maximal subgroup, plays an important role. Malcev products play a significant role in the study of the lattice of subvarieties of the variety \(\mathcal{CR}\) of all completely regular semigroups. For example, \(\mathcal{CR}\) itself is the Malcev product \((\mathcal G\circ\mathcal{RB})\circ\mathcal S\) and the variety of cryptogroups is the Malcev product \(\mathcal G\circ\mathcal B\), where \(\mathcal G\), \(\mathcal{RB}\), \(\mathcal S\) and \(\mathcal B\) denote the varieties of groups, rectangular bands, semilattices, and bands, respectively. [See \textit{M. Petrich} and \textit{N. R. Reilly}, Completely regular semigroups. Chichester: Wiley (1999; Zbl 0967.20034).] The author extends this viewpoint by replacing the class of groups by the class \(\mathcal U\) of unipotent monoids. The overall framework now consists of semigroups with only \(a^0\) as the additional unary operation. For instance, the author finds defining identities for \(\mathcal U\circ\mathcal B\) and also describes it in terms of the relation \(\widetilde{\mathcal H}=\widetilde{\mathcal L}\cap\widetilde{\mathcal R}\), where elements are related under \(\widetilde{\mathcal L}\), for instance, if they have the same sets of right identities. In the language of the `York' school, they are semiabundant, and \(\widetilde{\mathcal H}\) is a congruence. The members of the quasivariety \((\mathcal U\circ\mathcal{RB})\circ\mathcal S\) are also described. A large number of further results of this style are proved, and the paper concludes with a diagram showing the relationships among many of them.