Products of idempotent endomorphisms of an independence algebra of finite rank

Abstract

Products of idempotents are investigated in the endomorphism monoid of an algebra belonging to a class of algebras which includes finite sets and finite dimensional vector spaces as special cases. It is shown that every endomorphism which is not an automorphism is a product of idempotent endomorphisms. This provides a common generalisation of earlier results of Howie and Erdos for the cases when the algebra is a set or vector space respectively.