Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
A class of regular semigroups closed under taking direct products, regular subsemigroups and homomorphic images is an e(xistence) -variety of regular semigroups. The class of all combinatorial strict regular semigroups is the e-variety generated by the five element non-orthodox completely 0-simple semigroup and consists of all regular subdirect products of combinatorial completely 0-simple semigroups and/or rectangular bands. The bifree object on the set X in is the natural concept of a ‘free object’ in the class . is generated by the set X and the set of formal inverses X′ under the two binary operations of multiplication · and forming the sandwich element ∧A. Hence is a homomorphic image of the absolutely free algebra of type 〈2, 2〉 generated by X ∪X′. In this paper we shall describe the associated congruence on F〈2, 2〉(X∪X′) and construct a model of in terms of sets and binary relations. As an application, a model of the free strict pseudosemilattice on a set X is obtained.