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4 votes
2 answers
544 views

Membership problem in monoids

What is the simplest example of a monoid with undecidable membership problem? In other words, I'm looking for a concrete monoid $S$ such that there is no algorithm which takes elements $s_1,...,s_n$ ...
1 vote
1 answer
142 views

Congruences that aren't "finite from above," take 2: semigroups

This is a hopefully less trivial version of this question. Briefly, say that a congruence is parafinite if it is the largest congruence contained in some equivalence relation with finitely many ...
4 votes
0 answers
170 views

Corollaries of Kleene's Theorem (Regular Languages)

Kleene's theorem that finite automata (specifically, nondeterministic) are expressively equivalent to regular expressions seems to be a powerful and not immediately obvious tool for untangling the ...
13 votes
1 answer
623 views

Ultracategories with one object

Historically, the theory of ultracategories was invented by Makkai to prove a strong conceptual completeness theorem for first-order logic, roughly: if $T$ and $S$ are two first-order theories such ...
5 votes
1 answer
227 views

"Tietze-like transformations" for defining interesting bijections between algebraic structures

Consider the following two definitions of the natural numbers: The natural numbers are the algebraic structure $\mathbb{N}_1$ generated by one constant, $0$ and one unary function, $S$ (and no ...
5 votes
3 answers
576 views

Is the class of power-associative binars finitely axiomatizable?

A binar is simply a set $S$ equipped with a single binary operation $*$. A power-associative binar is a binar where the subalgebra generated by a single element is associative. Equivalently, they can ...
8 votes
2 answers
585 views

Is the equational theory of groups axiomatized by the associative law?

Consider the class of groups in the signature {*}. Is the equational theory of that class axiomatized by the associative law? I asked this on math stack exchange but I didn't receive a satisfactory ...
1 vote
2 answers
339 views

Are monoids with zero and partial homomorphisms related?

Context: Let $\Sigma=\{U,C,A,G\}$ and $L\subset\Sigma^*$, i.e. $L$ is a language over the alphabet $\Sigma$. Let $\Sigma'=\{0,1\}$ and define a homomorphism $f:\Sigma^*\to\Sigma'^*$ by extending $U \...
2 votes
0 answers
272 views

Continuity of multiplicative character

Let $G$ be a discrete group and $\beta (G)$ denote the Stone-Cech compactification of $G$, a right topological semigroup. By a multiplicative character, I mean a mapping that preserves multiplication ...
3 votes
1 answer
529 views

Study of free monoids of the recursive S. Eilenberg.

Compared to the usual treatises on recursion (eg, Rogers H. "Computability and Undecidability." McGraw-Hill, New York) the book of Samuel Eilenberg & Calvin C. Elgot "Recursiveness" treats such ...
8 votes
2 answers
427 views

Is there a general result that theorems about finite structures proved in ZFC can be proved in ZF?

The title question is too vague so let me be specific. Much of modern finite semigroup theory uses profinite semigroups and properties of profinite semigroups that depend on the existence of prime ...