THE FINITE BASIS PROBLEM FOR THE MONOID OF TWO-BY-TWO UPPER TRIANGULAR TROPICAL MATRICES

Abstract

For each positive $n$, let $\mathbf{u}_{n}\approx \boldsymbol{v}_{n}$ denote the identity obtained from the Adjan identity $(xy)(yx)(xy)(xy)(yx)\approx (xy)(yx)(yx)(xy)(yx)$ by substituting $(xy)\rightarrow (x_{1}x_{2}\ldots x_{n})$ and $(yx)\rightarrow (x_{n}\ldots x_{2}x_{1})$. We show that every monoid which satisfies $\mathbf{u}_{n}\approx \boldsymbol{v}_{n}$ for each positive $n$ and generates a variety containing the bicyclic monoid is nonfinitely based. This implies that the monoid $U_{2}(\mathbb{T})$ (respectively, $U_{2}(\overline{\mathbb{Z}})$) of two-by-two upper triangular tropical matrices over the tropical semiring $\mathbb{T}=\mathbb{R}\cup \{-\infty \}$ (respectively, $\overline{\mathbb{Z}}=\mathbb{Z}\cup \{-\infty \}$) is nonfinitely based.