Maximal ideals of semigroups of endomorphisms

Abstract

The maximal left ideal, the maximal right ideal and the maximal two-sided ideal are all characterized for quite general semigroups of endomorphisms. These results are then applied to such semigroups as the semigroup of all continuous selfmaps of a topological space, the semigroup of all closed selfmaps of a topological space, and the semigroup of all linear endomorphisms of a vector space.