Idempotent Generation in the Endomorphism Monoid of a Uniform Partition

Denote by 𝒯_n and 𝒮_n the full transformation semigroup and the symmetric group on the set {1,…, n}, and ?_n = {1} ∪ (𝒯_n?𝒮_n). Let 𝒯(X, 𝒫) denote the monoid of all transformations of the finite set X preserving a uniform partition 𝒫 of X into m subsets of size n, where m, n ≥ 2. We enumerate the idempotents of 𝒯(X, 𝒫), and describe the submonoid S = ? E ? generated by the idempotents E = E(𝒯(X, 𝒫)). We show that S = S₁ ∪ S₂, where S₁ is a direct product of m copies of ?_n, and S₂ is a wreath product of 𝒯_n with 𝒯_m?𝒮_m. We calculate the rank and idempotent rank of S, showing that these are equal, and we also classify and enumerate all the idempotent generating sets of minimal size. In doing so, we also obtain new results about arbitrary idempotent generating sets of ?_n.