On semigroup presentations

Semigroup presentations have been studied over a long period, usually as a means of providing examples of semigroups. In 1967 B. H. Neumann introduced an enumeration method for finitely presented semigroups analogous to the Todd–Coxeter coset enumeration process for groups. A proof of Neumann's enumeration method was given by Jura in 1978. In Section 3 of this paper we describe a machine implementation of a semigroup enumeration algorithm based on that of Neumann. In Section 2 we examine certain semigroup presentations, motivated by the fact that the corresponding group presentation has yielded interesting groups. The theorems, although proved algebraically, were suggested by the semigroup enumeration program.