A short note on strongly flat covers of acts over monoids

Recently two different concepts of covers of acts over monoids have been studied by a number of authors and many interesting results discovered. One of these concepts is based on coessential epimorphisms and the other is based on Enochs' definition of a flat cover of a module over a ring. Two recent papers have suggested that in the former case, strongly flat covers are not unique. We show that these examples are in fact false and so the question of uniqueness appears to still remain open. In the latter case, we re-present an example due to Kruml that demonstrates that, unlike the case for flat covers of modules, strongly flat covers of S-acts do not always exist

The multiplicative semigroup of a Dedekind domain

In 1995 Grillet defined the concept of a stratified semigroup and a stratified semigroup with zero. The present authors extended that idea to include semigroups with a more general base and proved, amongst other things, that finite semigroups in which the H-classes contain idempotents, are semilattices of stratified extensions of completely simple semigroups, and every strict stratified extension of a Clifford semigroup is a semilattice of stratified extensions of groups. We continue this work here by considering the multiplicative semigroup of Dedekind domains and show in particular that quotients of such rings have a multiplicative structure that is a (finite) Boolean algebra of stratified extensions of groups

On covers of cyclic acts over monoids

In (Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 33:385–390, 2001) Bican, Bashir and Enochs finally solved a long standing conjecture in module theory that all modules over a unitary ring have a flat cover. The only substantial work on covers of acts over monoids seems to be that of Isbell (Semigroup Forum 2:95–118, 1971), Fountain (Proc. Edinb. Math. Soc. (2) 20:87–93, 1976) and Kilp (Semigroup Forum 53:225–229, 1996) who only consider projective covers. To our knowledge the situation for flat covers of acts has not been addressed and this paper is an attempt to initiate such a study. We consider almost exclusively covers of cyclic acts and restrict our attention to strongly flat and condition (P) covers. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such covers and for a monoid to have the property that all its cyclic right acts have a strongly flat cover (resp. (P)-cover). We give numerous classes of monoids that satisfy these conditions and we also show that there are monoids that do not satisfy this condition in the strongly flat case. We give a new necessary and sufficient condition for a cyclic act to have a projective cover and provide a new proof of one of Isbell’s classic results concerning projective covers. We show also that condition (P) covers are not unique, unlike the situation for projective covers

Flatness, extension and amalgamation in monoids, semigroups and rings

We begin our study of amalgamations by examining some ideas which are well-known for the category of R-modules. In particular we look at such notions as direct limits, pushouts, pullbacks, tensor products and flatness in the category of S-sets. Chapter II introduces the important concept of free extensions and uses this to describe the amalgamated free product. In Chapter III we define the extension property and the notion of purity. We show that many of the important notions in semigroup amalgams are intimately connected to these. In Section 2 we deduce that 'the extension property implies amalgamation' and more surprisingly that a semigroup U is an amalgamation base if and only if it has the extension property in every containing semigroup. Chapter IV revisits the idea of flatness and after some technical results we prove a result, similar to one for rings, on flat amalgams. In Chapter V we show that the results of Hall and Howie on perfect amalgams can be proved using the same techniques as those used in Chapters III and IV. We conclude the thesis with a look at the case of rings. We show that almost all of the results for semi group amalgams examined in the previous chapters, also hold for ring amalgams

Covers for S-acts and Condition (A) for a monoid S

A monoid S satisfies Condition (A) if every locally cyclic left S-act is cyclic. This condition first arose in Isbell's work on left perfect monoids, that is, monoids such that every left S-act has a projective cover. Isbell showed that S is left perfect if and only if every cyclic left S-act has a projective cover and Condition (A) holds. Fountain built on Isbell's work to show that S is left perfect if and only if it satisfies Condition (A) together with the descending chain condition on principal right ideals, MR. We note that a ring is left perfect (with an analogous definition) if and only if it satisfies MR. The appearance of Condition (A) in this context is, therefore, monoid specific. Condition (A) has a number of alternative characterisations, in particular, it is equivalent to the ascending chain condition on cyclic subacts of any left S-act. In spite of this, it remains somewhat esoteric. The first aim of this paper is to investigate the preservation of Condition (A) under basic semigroup-theoretic constructions. Recently, Khosravi, Ershad and Sedaghatjoo have shown that every left S-act has a strongly flat or Condition (P) cover if and only if every cyclic left S-act has such a cover and Condition (A) holds. Here we find a range of classes of S-acts such that every left S-act has a cover from if and only if every cyclic left S-act does and Condition (A) holds. In doing so we find a further characterisation of Condition (A) purely in terms of the existence of covers of a certain kind. Finally, we make some observations concerning left perfect monoids and investigate a class of monoids close to being left perfect, which we name lefta-perfect