On bosets and fundamental semigroups

Abstract

The term boset was coined by Patrick Jordan, both as an abbreviation of biordered set, and as a generalisation of poset, itself an abbreviation of partially ordered set. A boset is a set equipped with a partial multiplication and two intertwining reflexive and transitive arrow relations which satisfy certain axioms. When the arrow relations coincide the boset becomes a poset. Bosets were invented by Nambooripad (in the 1970s) who developed his own version of the theory of fundamental regular semigroups, including the classical theory of fundamental inverse semigroups using semilattices, due to Munn (in the 1960s). A semigroup is fundamental if it cannot be shrunk homomorphically without collapsing its skeleton of idempotents, which is a boset. Nambooripad constructed the maximum fundamental regular semigroup with a given boset of idempotents. Fundamental semigroups and bosets are natural candidates for basic building blocks in semigroup theory because every semigroup is a coextension of a fundamental semigroup in which the boset of idempotents is undisturbed. Recently Jordan reproved Nambooripad's results using a new construction based on arbitrary bosets. In this thesis we prove that this construction is always fundamental, which was previously known only for regular bosets, and also that it possesses a certain maximality property with respect to semigroups which are generated by regular elements. For nonregular bosets this constuction may be regular or nonregular. We introduce a class of bosets, called sawtooth bosets, which contain many regular and nonregular examples, and correct a criterion of Jordan's for the regularity of this construction for sawtooth bosets with two teeth. We also introduce a subclass, called cyclic sawtooth bosets, also containing many regular and nonregular examples, for which the construction is always regular.