A collection of cancellative, singly aligned, non-embeddable monoids

Abstract

By classical results of Malcev, cancellative monoids need not be group-embeddable. In this paper, we describe and give presentations for and study an infinite family $\mathcal{M}_n$ of cancellative monoids which are not group-embeddable, originating from Malcev's original work. We show that $\mathcal{M}_n$ is singly aligned for $n \geq 2$, owing to applications in the study of $\mathrm{C}^*$-algebras by Brix, Bruce and Dor-On. We finish by showing that $\mathcal{M}_1$ is not singly aligned, but is $2$-aligned.