A monoid S 1 obtained by adjoining a unit element to a 2-testable semigroup S is said to be 2-testable. It is shown that a 2-testable monoid S 1 is either inherently non-finitely based or hereditarily finitely based, depending on whether or not the variety generated by the semigroup S contains the Brandt semigroup of order five. Consequently, it is decidable in quadratic time if a finite 2-testable monoid is finitely based.
This paper surveys the area of Free Burnside Semigroups. The theory of these semigroups, as is the case for groups, is far from being completely known. For semigroups, the most impressive results were obtained in the last 10 years. In this paper we give priority to the mathematical treatment of the problem and do not stress too much neither motivation nor the historical aspects. No proofs are presented in this paper, but we tried to give as many examples as was possible.
This paper surveys the area of Free Burnside Semigroups. The theory of these semigroups, as is the case for groups, is far from being completely known. For semigroups, the most impressive results were obtained in the last 10 years. In this paper we give priority to the mathematical treatment of the problem and do not stress too much neither motivation nor the historical aspects. No proofs are presented in this paper, but we tried to give as many examples as was possible.