Ordered groupoid quotients and congruences on inverse semigroups

We introduce a preorder on an inverse semigroup S associated to any normal inverse subsemigroup N, that lies between the natural partial order and Green’s \({\mathcal {J}}\)–relation. The corresponding equivalence relation \(\simeq _N\) is not necessarily a congruence on S, but the quotient set does inherit a natural ordered groupoid structure. We show that this construction permits the factorisation of any inverse semigroup homomorphism into a composition of a quotient map and a star-injective functor, and that this decomposition implies a classification of congruences on S. We give an application to the congruence and certain normal inverse subsemigroups associate to an inverse monoid presentation.