The structure mappings on a regular semigroup

Abstract

In (5) the author showed how to construct all inverse semigroups from their trace and semilattice of idempotents: the construction is by means of a family of mappings between ℛ-classes of the semigroup which we refer to as the structure mappings of the semigroup. In (7) (see also (8) and (9)) K. S. S. Nambooripad has adopted a similar approach to the structure of regular semigroups: he shows how to construct regular semigroups from their trace and biordered set of idempotents by means of a family of mappings between ℛ-classes and between ℒ-classes of the semigroup which we again refer to as the structure mappings of the semigroup. In the present paper we aim to provide a simpler set of axioms characterising the structure mappings on a regular semigroup than the axioms (R1)-(R7) of Nambooripad (9). Two major differences occur between Nambooripad's approach (9) and the approach adopted here: first, we consider the set of idempotents of our semigroups to be equipped with a partial regular band structure (in the sense of Clifford (3)) rather than a biorder structure, and second, we shall enlarge the set of structure mappings used by Nambooripad.