On the intersection of the maximal ideals

Abstract

Some additional properties of the intersection of the maximal ideals of a compact semigroup are developed here based on results in [1] and [3]. Throughout S denotes a compact usually connected semigroup with at least one maximal proper ideal. The set of all such maximal ideals is denoted by ℳ, the intersection of the members of ℳ by R, the idempotents by E and the minimal ideal by K. Some proofs are more algebraic and in a few cases we do not need S connected. Key facts are that members of ℳ are open and dense, complements of distinct maximal ideals are disjoint and the union of any two such is S. After some generalization of results in [1] and [3], we investigate R relative to the topology of S. Necessary and sufficient conditions are found for R to be compact hence closed and for R to be open. Unlike the situation with the minimal ideal, R can be closed or open largely depending on the position of E relative to R. The following theorem summarizes necessary preliminaries from [1] and [3].