Universal varieties of semigroups
Vácłav Koubek, Jiří Sichler · Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society Series A Pure Mathematics and Statistics · 1984
Abstract A category V is called universal (or binding) if every category of algebras is isomorphic to a full subcategory of V. The main result states that a semigroup variety V is universal if and only if it contains all commutative semigroups and fails the identity xnyn = (xy)n for every n ≥ 1. Further-more, the universality of a semigroup variety V is equivalent to the existence in V of a nontrivial semigroup whose endomorphism monoid is trivial, and also to the representability of every monoid as the monoid of all endomorphisms of some semigroup in V. Every universal semigroup variety contains a minimal one with this property while there is no smallest universal semigroup variety.