Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2014
Higgins [‘The Mitsch order on a semigroup’, Semigroup Forum 49 (1994), 261–266] showed that the natural partial orders on a semigroup and its regular subsemigroups coincide. This is why we are interested in the study of the natural partial order on nonregular semigroups. Of particular interest are the nonregular semigroups of linear transformations with lower bounds on the nullity or the co-rank. In this paper, we determine when they exist, characterise the natural partial order on these nonregular semigroups and consider questions of compatibility, minimality and maximality. In addition, we provide many examples associated with our results.