Sandwich semigroups in locally small categories II: transformations

Fix sets X and Y, and write \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}\) for the set of all partial functions \(X\rightarrow Y\). Fix a partial function \({a:Y\rightarrow X}\), and define the operation \(\star _a\) on \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}\) by \(f\star _ag=fag\) for \(f,g\in \mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}\). The sandwich semigroup \((\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY},\star _a)\) is denoted \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a\). We apply general results from Part I to thoroughly describe the structural and combinatorial properties of \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a\), as well as its regular and idempotent-generated subsemigroups, \({\text {Reg}}(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a)\) and \(\mathbb E(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a)\). After describing regularity, stability and Green’s relations and preorders, we exhibit \({\text {Reg}}(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a)\) as a pullback product of certain regular subsemigroups of the (non-sandwich) partial transformation semigroups \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_X\) and \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_Y\), and as a kind of “inflation” of \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_A\), where A is the image of the sandwich element a. We also calculate the rank (minimal size of a generating set) and, where appropriate, the idempotent rank (minimal size of an idempotent generating set) of \(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a\), \({\text {Reg}}(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a)\) and \(\mathbb E(\mathcal P\mathcal T_{XY}^a)\). The same program is also carried out for sandwich semigroups of totally defined functions and for injective partial functions. Several corollaries are obtained for various (non-sandwich) semigroups of (partial) transformations with restricted image, domain and/or kernel.