Avoidable Sets in The Bicyclic Inverse Semigroup

Abstract

A subset $U$ of a set $S$ with a binary operation is called {\it avoidable} if $S$ can be partitioned into two subsets $A$ and $B$ such that no element of $U$ can be written as a product of two distinct elements of $A$ or as the product of two distinct elements of $B$. The avoidable sets of the bicyclic inverse semigroup are classified.