Matrix semigroups over semirings

We study properties determined by idempotents in the following families of matrix semigroups over a semiring [Formula: see text]: the full matrix semigroup [Formula: see text], the semigroup [Formula: see text] consisting of upper triangular matrices, and the semigroup [Formula: see text] consisting of all unitriangular matrices. Il’in has shown that (for [Formula: see text]) the semigroup [Formula: see text] is regular if and only if [Formula: see text] is a regular ring. We show that [Formula: see text] is regular if and only if [Formula: see text] and the multiplicative semigroup of [Formula: see text] is regular. The notions of being abundant or Fountain (formerly, weakly abundant) are weaker than being regular but are also defined in terms of idempotents, namely, every class of certain equivalence relations must contain an idempotent. Each of [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] admits a natural anti-isomorphism allowing us to characterise abundance and Fountainicity in terms of the left action of idempotent matrices upon column spaces. In the case where the semiring is exact, we show that [Formula: see text] is abundant if and only if it is regular. Our main interest is in the case where [Formula: see text] is an idempotent semifield, our motivating example being that of the tropical semiring [Formula: see text]. We prove that certain subsemigroups of [Formula: see text], including several generalisations of well-studied monoids of binary relations (Hall relations, reflexive relations, unitriangular Boolean matrices), are Fountain. We also consider the subsemigroups [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] consisting of those matrices of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] having all elements on and above the leading diagonal non-zero. We prove the idempotent generated subsemigroup of [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]. Further, [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are families of Fountain semigroups with interesting and unusual properties. In particular, every [Formula: see text]-class and [Formula: see text]-class contains a unique idempotent, where [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are the relations used to define Fountainicity, but yet the idempotents do not form a semilattice.

Cross-connections of completely simple semigroups

A completely simple semigroup [Formula: see text] is a semigroup without zero which has no proper ideals and contains a primitive idempotent. It is known that [Formula: see text] is a regular semigroup and any completely simple semigroup is isomorphic to the Rees matrix semigroup [Formula: see text] (cf. D. Rees, On semigroups, Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 36 (1940) 387–400). In the study of structure theory of regular semigroups, Nambooripad introduced the concept of normal categories to construct the semigroup from its principal left (right) ideals using cross-connections. A normal category [Formula: see text] is a small category with subobjects wherein each object of the category has an associated idempotent normal cone and each morphism admits a normal factorization. A cross-connection between two normal categories [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] is a local isomorphism [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text] is the normal dual of the category [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we identify the normal categories associated with a completely simple semigroup [Formula: see text] and show that the semigroup of normal cones [Formula: see text] is isomorphic to a semi-direct product [Formula: see text]. We characterize the cross-connections in this case and show that each sandwich matrix [Formula: see text] correspond to a cross-connection. Further we use each of these cross-connections to give a representation of the completely simple semigroup as a cross-connection semigroup.

On Decompositions of Matrices over Distributive Lattices

LetLbe a distributive lattice andMn,q(L)(Mn(L), resp.) the semigroup (semiring, resp.) ofn×q(n×n, resp.) matrices overL. In this paper, we show that if there is a subdirect embedding from distributive latticeLto the direct product∏i=1m‍Liof distributive latticesL1,L2, …,Lm, then there will be a corresponding subdirect embedding from the matrix semigroupMn,q(L)(semiringMn(L), resp.) to semigroup∏i=1m‍Mn,q(Li)(semiring∏i=1m‍Mn(Li), resp.). Further, it is proved that a matrix over a distributive lattice can be decomposed into the sum of matrices over some of its special subchains. This generalizes and extends the decomposition theorems of matrices over finite distributive lattices, chain semirings, fuzzy semirings, and so forth. Finally, as some applications, we present a method to calculate the indices and periods of the matrices over a distributive lattice and characterize the structures of idempotent and nilpotent matrices over it. We translate the characterizations of idempotent and nilpotent matrices over a distributive lattice into the corresponding ones of the binary Boolean cases, which also generalize the corresponding structures of idempotent and nilpotent matrices over general Boolean algebras, chain semirings, fuzzy semirings, and so forth.

ON LOCALLY EHRESMANN SEMIGROUPS

It was first proved by McAlister in 1983 that every locally inverse semigroup is a locally isomorphic image of a regular Rees matrix semigroup over an inverse semigroup and Lawson in 2000 further generalized this result to some special locally adequate semigroups. In this paper, we show how these results can be extended to a class of locally Ehresmann semigroups.