On Semitransitive Collections of Operators

A collection F of operators on a vector space V is said to be semitransitive if for every pair of nonzero vectors x and y in V there exists a member T of F such that either Tx = y or Ty = x (or both). We study semitransitive algebras and semigroups of operators. One of the main results is that if the underlying field is algebraically closed, then every semitransitive algebra of operators on a space of dimension n contains a nilpotent element of index n. Among other results on semitransitive semigroups, we show that if the rank of nonzero members of such a semigroup acting on an n-dimensional space is a constant k, then k divides n.