Reducibility of joins involving some locally trivial pseudovarieties

In this paper, we show that sigma-reducibility is preserved under joins with K, where K is the pseudovariety of semigroups in which idempotents are left zeros. Reducibility of joins with D, the pseudovariety of semigroups in which idempotents are right zeros, is also considered. In this case, we were able to prove that sigma-reducibility is preserved for joins with pseudovarieties verifying a certain property of cancellation. As an example involving the semidirect product, we prove that Sl*K is k-tame, where Sl stands for the pseudovariety of semilattices.FCT through the Centro de Matemática da Universidade do MinhoEuropean Community Fund FEDE

Tameness of pseudovariety joins involving R

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 20M07 (primary); 20M05, 20M35, 68Q70 (secondary).In this paper, we establish several decidability results for pseudovariety joins of the form VvW, where V is a subpseudovariety of J or the pseudovariety R. Here, J (resp. R) denotes the pseudovariety of all J-trivial (resp. R-trivial) semigroups. In particular, we show that the pseudovariety VvW is (completely) kappa-tame when V is a subpseudovariety of J with decidable kappa-word problem and W is (completely) kappa-tame. Moreover, if W is a kappa-tame pseudovariety which satisfies the pseudoidentity x_1...x_ry^{\omega+1}zt^\omega = x_1... x_ryzt^\omega, then we prove that RvW is also kappa-tame. In particular the joins RvAb, RvG, RvOCR, and RvCR are decidable.União Europeia (UE). Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) - POCTI/32817/MAT/2000.International Association for the Promotion of Co-operation with Scientists from the New Independent States (NIS) of the Former Soviet Union (INTAS) - project 99-1224.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

The omega-inequality problem for concatenation hierarchies of star-free languages

The problem considered in this paper is whether an inequality of omega-terms is valid in a given level of a concatenation hierarchy of star-free languages. The main result shows that this problem is decidable for all (integer and half) levels of the Straubing-Th\'erien hierarchy

Pointlike sets with respect to R and J

We present an algorithm to compute the pointlike subsets of a finite semigroup with respect to the pseudovariety R of all finite R-trivial semigroups. The algorithm is inspired by Henckell’s algorithm for computing the pointlike subsets with respect to the pseudovariety of all finite aperiodic semigroups. We also give an algorithm to compute J-pointlike sets, where J denotes the pseudovariety of all finite J-trivial semigroups. We finally show that, in contrast with the situation for R, the natural adaptation of Henckell’s algorithm to J computes pointlike sets, but not all of them.Pessoa French-Portuguese project Egide- Grices 11113YMFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Some structural properties of the free profinite aperiodic semigroup

Profinite semigroups provide powerful tools to understand properties of classes of regular languages. Until very recently however, little was known on the structure of "large" relatively free profinite semi- groups. In this paper, we present new results obtained for the class of all finite aperiodic (that is, group-free) semigroups. Given a finite alphabet X, we focus on the following problems: (1) the word problem for ω-terms on X evaluated on the free pro-aperiodic semigroup, and (2) the computation of closures of regular languages in the ω-subsemigroup of the free pro-aperiodic semigroup generated by X.FCT through the Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Minho and the Centro de Matemática da Universidade do PortoEuropean Community Fund FEDERESF programme “Automata: from Mathematics to Applications (AutoMathA)”Pessoa Portuguese-French project Egide-Grices 11113Y