The cardinality of the set of left invariant means on a left amenable semigroup

Let S be a left amenable semigroup and \({\mathcal L}(S)\) be the set of left invariant means on S. A problem that has been around since the 1950's is the following: what is the cardinality \(| {\mathcal L}(S)|\) of \({\mathcal L}(S)?\) Important contributions to this question have been made by Day, Granirer, Chou and Klawe. Chou showed in 1976 that if S is an infinite group, then \(| {\mathcal L}(G)| =2^{2^{| G|}}\). Granirer and Klawe showed that dim Span \({\mathcal L}(S)=n<\infty\) if and only if S contains exactly n finite, left ideal groups. This leaves the case where Span \({\mathcal L}(S)\) is not finite-dimensional to be considered. Klawe has given a result in this case, but there is a set-theoretic error in the proof. The present paper solves this cardinality problem in terms of a new cardinal m. This cardinal, which is defined in terms of the algebra of S, is given by: \(m=\min \{| \cup^{n}_{i=1}s_ iS_ i|:\quad n\geq 1,\quad \{S_ 1,...,S_ n\}\quad is\quad a\quad partition\quad of\quad S,\quad s_ 1,...,s_ n\in S\}.\) The main theorem of the paper is the following: if m is finite, then \(\dim Span {\mathcal L}(S)<\infty,\) while if m is infinite, then \(| {\mathcal L}(S)| =2^{2^ m}.\) The proof uses a transfinite induction within a transfinite induction argument, as well as the theory of left thick sets. This argument is paradigmatic in the sense that other related cardinality results can be proved using it. The paper thus provides a unified treatment of such results. When \(m=| S|\), the semigroup S is said to be a.l.c. (almost left cancellative). This gives a large class of semigroups, and this class may well be relevant for other problems where one requires semigroups whose multiplications do not collapse too much.

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