Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
To each idempotent v of a semigroup T, there is associated, in a natural way, a subsemigroup Tv of T. The subsemigroup Tv is simply the collection of all elements of T for which v acts as a two-sided identity. We refer to such a subsemigroup as an I-subsemigroup of T. We first establish some elementary properties of these subsemigroups with no restrictions on the semigroup in which they are contained. Then we turn our attention to the semigroup of all continuous selfmaps of a topological space. The I-subsemigroups of these semigroups are investigated in some detail and so are the a-monomorphisms [3, p. 518] from one such semigroup into another. Among other things, a relationship is established between I-subsemigroups and α-monomorphisms. An analogous theory exists for semigroups of closed selfmaps on topological spaces. A number of results are listed for these semigroups with the proofs often deleted since, in many cases, the situation is much the same as for semigroups of continuous functions.