Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
We give an abstract description of the kernel of a proper primitive inverse congruence on a categorical semigroup. More specifically, we show that it is a *-reflexive, *-unitary, *-dense subsemigroup, and that on a given categorical semigroup there is a one–one correspondence between such subsemigroups and the proper primitive inverse congruences. Our results allow us to give a description of the minimum proper primitive inverse semigroup congruence on a strongly E*-dense categorical semigroup.