Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2019
This paper provides short proofs of two fundamental theorems of finite semigroup theory whose previous proofs were significantly longer, namely the two-sided Krohn-Rhodes decomposition theorem and Henckell’s aperiodic pointlike theorem. We use a new algebraic technique that we call the merge decomposition. A prototypical application of this technique decomposes a semigroup $T$ into a two-sided semidirect product whose components are built from two subsemigroups $T_{1}$, $T_{2}$, which together generate $T$, and the subsemigroup generated by their setwise product $T_{1}T_{2}$. In this sense we decompose $T$ by merging the subsemigroups $T_{1}$ and $T_{2}$. More generally, our technique merges semigroup homomorphisms from free semigroups.
Author S. J. v. G. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant #655941. Author B. S. was supported by United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation #2012080 and NSA MSP #H98230-16-1-0047.