Literally idempotent languages and their varieties - two letter case

A language L ⊆ A∗ is literally idempotent in case that uav ∈ L if and only if uav ∈ L, for each u, v ∈ A∗, a ∈ A. We already studied classes of such languages closely related to the (positive) varieties of the famous StraubingThérien hierarchy. In the present paper we start a systematic study of literal varieties of literally idempotent languages, namely we deal with the case of two letter alphabet. First, we consider natural canonical expressions for such languages. Secondly, we describe all possible classes of the form V ({a, b}) where V is a literal variety of literally idempotent languages. MSC 2000 Classification: 68Q45 Formal languages and automata