On Diagonal Acts of Monoids

Abstract

In this paper we discuss what is known so far about diagonal acts of monoids. The first results that will be discussed comprise an overview of some work done on determining whether or not the diagonal act can be finitely generated or cyclic when looking at specific classes of monoids. This has been a topic of interest to a handful of semigroup theorists over the past seven years. We then move on to discuss some results pertaining to flatness properties of diagonal acts. The theory of flatness properties of acts over monoids has been of major interest over the past two decades, but so far there are no papers published on this subject that relate specifically to diagonal acts. We attempt to shed some light on this topic as well as present some new problems.