Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2009
For a completely 0-simple semigroup, Howie [2] has investigated the subsemigroup generated by the idempotents. Here we determine those elements of such a semigroup which are generated by the set of nilpotent elements and hence we derive a condition for a completely 0-simple semigroup to be nilpotent generated. This condition is purely combinatorial, in terms of the structure of the graph associated with the semigroup, and it includes the case of a non-regular Rees matrix semigroup.