An algebra has the Howson property if the intersection of any two finitely generated subalgebras is again finitely generated. A simple necessary and sufficient condition is given for the Howson property to hold on an inverse semigroup with finitely many idempotents. In addition, it is shown that any monogenic inverse semigroup has the Howson property.

Paterson showed how to construct an étale groupoid from an inverse semigroup using ideas from functional analysis. This construction was later simplified by Lenz. We show that Lenz’s construction can itself be further simplified by using filters: the topological groupoid associated with an inverse semigroup is precisely a groupoid of filters. In addition, idempotent filters are closed inverse subsemigroups and so determine transitive representations by means of partial bijections. This connection between filters and representations by partial bijections is exploited to show how linear representations of inverse semigroups can be constructed from the groups occurring in the associated topological groupoid.

We introduce the notion of wide representation of an inverse semigroup and prove that with a suitably defined topology there is a space of germs of such a representation that has the structure of an étale groupoid. This gives an elegant description of Paterson's universal groupoid and of the translation groupoid of Skandalis, Tu and Yu. In addition, we characterize the inverse semigroups that arise from groupoids, leading to a precise bijection between the class of étale groupoids and the class of complete and infinitely distributive inverse monoids equipped with suitable representations, and we explain the sense in which quantales and localic groupoids carry a generalization of this correspondence.

A submonoid S of a monoid M is said to be cofull if it contains the group of units of M. We extract from the work of Easdown, East and FitzGerald (2002) a sufficient condition for a monoid to embed as a cofull submonoid of the coset monoid of its group of units, and show further that this condition is necessary. This yields a simple description of the class of finite monoids which embed in the coset monoids of their group of units. We apply our results to give a simple proof of the result of McAlister [D. B. McAlister, ‘Embedding inverse semigroups in coset semigroups’, Semigroup Forum20 (1980), 255–267] which states that the symmetric inverse semigroup on a finite set X does not embed in the coset monoid of the symmetric group on X. We also explore examples, which are necessarily infinite, of embeddings whose images are not cofull.

We construct the freest idempotent-pure expansion of an inverse semigroup, generalizing an expansion of Margolis and Meakin for the group case. We also generalize the Birget-Rhodes prefix expansion to inverse semigroups with an application to partial actions of inverse semigroups. In the process of generalizing the latter expansion, we are led to a new class of idempotent-pure homomorphisms which we term F-morphisms. These play the same role in the theory of idempotent-pure homomorphisms that F-inverse monoids play in the theory of E-unitary inverse semigroups.

An ${\cal L}$-isomorphism between inverse semigroups $S$ and $T$ is an isomorphism between their lattices ${\cal L}(S)$ and ${\cal L}(T)$ of inverse subsemigroups. The author and others have shown that if $S$ is aperiodic – has no nontrivial subgroups – then any such isomorphism $\Phi$ induces a bijection $\phi$ between $S$ and $T$. We first characterize the bijections that arise in this way and go on to prove that under relatively weak ‘archimedean’ hypotheses, if $\phi$ restricts to an isomorphism on the semilattice of idempotents of $S$, then it must be an isomorphism on $S$ itself, thus generating a result of Goberstein. The hypothesis on the restriction to idempotents is satisfied in many applications. We go on to prove theorems similar to the above for the class of completely semisimple inverse semigroups.

An inverse semigroup S is said to be meet (join) semidistributive if its lattice (S) of full inverse subsemigroups is meet (join) semidistributive. We show that every meet (join) semidistributive inverse semigroup is in fact distributive.

Properties such as automaticity, growth and decidability are investigated for the class of finitely generated semigroups which have regular sets of unique normal forms. Knowledge obtained is then applied to the task of demonstrating that a class of semigroups derived from free inverse semigroups under certain closure operations is not automatic.

We investigate a locally full HNN extension of an inverse semigroup. A normal form theorem is obtained and applied to the word problem. We construct a tree and show that a maximal subgroup of a locally full HNN extension acts on the tree without inversion. Bass-Serre theory is employed to obtain a group presentation of the maximal subgroup as a fundamental group of a certain graph of groups associated with the D-structure of the original semigroup.

This note gives a necessary condition, in terms of graded actions, for an inverse semigroup to be a full amalgam. Under a mild additional hypothesis, the condition becomes sufficient.

We obtain analogues, in the setting of semigroups with zero, of McAlister's convering theoren and the structure theorems of McAlister, O'Carroll, and Margolis and Pin. The covers come from a class C of semigroups defined by modifying one of the many characterisations of E-unitary inverse semigroups, namely, that an inverse semigroups is E-unitary if and only if it is an inverse image of an idempotent-pure homomorphism onto a group. The class C is properly contained in the class of all E*-unitary inverse semigroups introduced by Szendrei but properly contains the class of strongly categorical E*-unitary semigroups recently considered by Gomes and Howie.

There is a substantial theory (modelled on permutation representations of groups) of representations of an inverse semigroup S in a symmetric inverse monoid Ix, that is, a monoid of partial one-to-one selfmaps of a set X. The present paper describes the structure of a categorical dual Ix* to the symmetric inverse monoid and discusses representations of an inverse semigroup in this dual symmetric inverse monoid. It is shown how a representation of S by (full) selfmaps of a set X leads to dual pairs of representations in Ix and Ix*, and how a number of known representations arise as one or the other of these pairs. Conditions on S are described which ensure that representations of S preserve such infima or suprema as exist in the natural order of S. The categorical treatment allows the construction, from standard functors, of representations of S in certain other inverse algebras (that is, inverse monoids in which all finite infima exist). The paper concludes by distinguishing two subclasses of inverse algebras on the basis of their embedding properties.