Products of irreducible matrices

In this paper we characterize the subsemigroup of B_n (B_n is the multiplicative semigroup of n × n Boolean matrices) generated by all the irreducible matrices, and hence give a necessary and sufficient condition for a Boolean matrix A to be a product of irreducible Boolean matrices. We also give a necessary and sufficient condition for an n × n nonnegative matrix to be a product of nonnegative irreducible matrices.