Semiring identities of the Brandt monoid

Abstract

The 6-element Brandt monoid $B_2^1$ admits a unique addition under which it becomes an additively idempotent semiring. We show that this addition is a term operation of $B_2^1$ as an inverse semigroup. As a consequence, we exhibit an easy proof that the semiring identities of $B_2^1$ are not finitely based.

6 pages