On the congruence extension property for compact semigroups

A topological semigroupS is said to have thecongruence extension property (CEP) provided that for each closed subsemigroupT ofS and each closed congruence σ onT, σ can be extended to a closed congruence onS. (That is, ∩(T xT=σ). The main result of this paper gives a characteriation of Γ-compact commutative archimedean semigroups with the congruence extension property (CEP). Consideration of this result was motivated by the problem of characterizing compact commutative semigroups with CEP as follows. It is well known that every commutative semigroup can be expressed as a semilattice of archimedean components each of which contains at most one idempotemt. The components of a compact commutative semigroup need not be compact (nor Γ-compact) as the congruence providing the decomposition is not necessarily closed. However, any component with CEP which is Γ-compact is characterized by the afore-mentioned result. Characterization of components of a compact commutative semigroup having CEP is a natural step towar characterization of the entire semigroup since CEP is a hereditary property. Other results prevented in this paper give a characterization of compact monothetic semigroups with CEP and show that Rees quotients of compact semigroups with CEP retain CEP.