In the paper "Schreier split epimorphisms between monoids" by Bourn, Nelson, Martins-Ferreira, Montoli and Sobral, Semigroup Forum June 2014, the authors prove a characterization of groups among monoids. I am hoping for a simpler proof of one direction.
Definitions. A splitting is a monoid homomorphism $f:A\to B$ with a specified section $s:B\to A$. A splitting is left homogeneous if for every $b\in B$, multiplication on the left by $s(b)$ is bijective $\mathrm{Ker}f\to f^{-1}(b)$. Analogously for right homogeneous. A splitting is homogeneous if it's both left and right homogeneous.
Remark. For the characterization, I think it suffices to assume the multiplication maps are surjective, not necessarily bijective.
Theorem. For a monoid $B$, TFAE
- $B$ is a group;
- Every splitting $A\overset{s}{\leftrightarrows}B$ over $B$ is homogeneous.
That 1$\implies$2 is straightforward and appears in proposition 3.4. The converse implication 2$\implies$1 is part of corollary 5.7 and involves an ordeal with internal relations.
Is there a simple(r) proof that 2$\implies$1?