There are several families of atomic monoids whose arithmetical invariants have received a great deal of attention during the last two decades. The factorization theory of finitely generated monoids, strongly primary monoids, Krull monoids, and C-monoids are among the most systematically studied. Puiseux monoids, which are additive submonoids of $\mathbb{Q}_{\ge 0}$ consisting of nonnegative rational numbers, have only been studied recently. In this paper, we provide evidence that this family comprises plenty of monoids with a basically unexplored atomic structure. We do this by showing that the arithmetical invariants of the well-studied atomic monoids mentioned earlier cannot be transferred to most Puiseux monoids via homomorphisms that preserve atomic configurations, i.e., transfer homomorphisms. Specifically, we show that transfer homomorphisms from a non-finitely generated atomic Puiseux monoid to a finitely generated monoid do not exist. We also find a large family of Puiseux monoids that fail to be strongly primary. In addition, we prove that the only nontrivial Puiseux monoid that accepts a transfer homomorphism to a Krull monoid is $\mathbb{N}_0$. Finally, we classify the Puiseux monoids that happen to be C-monoids.
A numerical monoid is a cofinite additive submonoid of the nonnegative integers, while a Puiseux monoid is an additive submonoid of the nonnegative cone of the rational numbers. Using that a Puiseux monoid is an increasing union of copies of numerical monoids, we prove that some of the factorization invariants of these two classes of monoids are related through a limiting process. This allows us to extend results from numerical to Puiseux monoids. We illustrate the versatility of this technique by recovering various known results about Puiseux monoids.
A molecule is a nonzero non-unit element of an integral domain (resp., commutative cancellative monoid) having a unique factorization into irreducibles (resp., atoms). Here we study the molecules of Puiseux monoids as well as the molecules of their corresponding semigroup algebras, which we call Puiseux algebras. We begin by presenting, in the context of numerical semigroups, some results on the possible cardinalities of the sets of molecules and the sets of reducible molecules (i.e., molecules that are not irreducibles/atoms). Then we study the molecules in the more general context of Puiseux…
In this paper, we study the atomic structure of Puiseux monoids generated by monotone sequences. To understand this atomic structure, it is often useful to know whether the monoid has a bounded generating set. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the atomicity and boundedness to be transferred from a monotone Puiseux monoid to all its submonoids. Finally, we present two special subfamilies of monotone Puiseux monoids and fully classify their atomic structure.
A Puiseux monoid is a submonoid of $(\mathbb{Q},+)$ consisting of nonnegative rational numbers. Although the operation of addition is continuous with respect to the standard topology, the set of irreducibles of a Puiseux monoid is, in general, difficult to describe. In this paper, we use topological density to understand how much a Puiseux monoid, as well as its set of irreducibles, spread through $\mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$. First, we separate Puiseux monoids according to their density in $\mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$, and we characterize monoids in each of these classes in terms of generating sets and sets …
A Puiseux monoid is an additive submonoid of the nonnegative cone of rational numbers. Although Puiseux monoids are torsion-free rank-one monoids, their atomic structure is rich and highly complex. For this reason, they have been important objects to construct crucial examples in commutative algebra and factorization theory. In 1974 Anne Grams used a Puiseux monoid to construct the first example of an atomic domain not satisfying the ACCP, disproving Cohn's conjecture that every atomic domain satisfies the ACCP. Even recently, Jim Coykendall and Felix Gotti have used Puiseux monoids to constru…
A Puiseux monoid is an additive submonoid of the nonnegative cone of the rational numbers. We say that a Puiseux monoid $M$ is exponential provided that there exist a positive rational $r$ and a set $S$ consisting of nonnegative integers, which contains $0$, such that $M$ is generated by the set $\{r^s \mid s \in S\}$. If $M$ is multiplicatively closed then we say that $M$ is an exponential Puiseux semiring. Here we study the atomic properties of exponential Puiseux monoids and semirings. First, we characterize atomic exponential Puiseux monoids, and we prove that the finite factorization prop…
Additive submonoids of $\mathbb{Q}_{\ge 0}$, also known as Puiseux monoids, are not unique factorization monoids (UFMs) in general. Indeed, the only unique factorization Puiseux monoids are those generated by one element. However, even if a Puiseux monoid is not a UFM, it may contain nonzero elements having exactly one factorization. We call such elements molecules. Molecules were first investigated by W. Narkiewicz in the context of algebraic number theory. More recently, F. Gotti and the first author studied molecules in the context of Puiseux monoids. Here we address some aspects related to…
Primary and strongly primary monoids and domains play a central role in the ideal and factorization theory of commutative monoids and domains. It is well-known that primary monoids satisfying the ascending chain condition on divisorial ideals (e.g., numerical monoids) are strongly primary; and the multiplicative monoid of non-zero elements of a one-dimensional local domain is primary and it is strongly primary if the domain is Noetherian. In the present paper, we focus on the study of additive submonoids of the non-negative rationals, called Puiseux monoids. It is easy to see that Puiseux mono…
A Puiseux monoid is an additive submonoid of the real line consisting of rationals. We say that a Puiseux monoid is reciprocal if it can be generated by the reciprocals of the terms of a strictly increasing sequence of pairwise relatively primes positive integers. We say that a commutative and cancellative (additive) monoid is atomic if every non-invertible element $x$ can be written as a sum of irreducibles. The number of irreducibles in this sum is called a length of $x$. In this paper, we identify and investigate generalized classes of reciprocal Puiseux monoids that are atomic. Moreover, f…
A Puiseux monoid is an additive submonoid of the nonnegative rational numbers. If $M$ is a Puiseux monoid, then the question of whether each non-invertible element of $M$ can be written as a sum of irreducible elements (that is, $M$ is atomic) is surprisingly difficult. Although various techniques have been developed over the past few years to identify subclasses of Puiseux monoids that are atomic, no general characterization of such monoids is known. Here we survey some of the most relevant aspects related to the atomicity of Puiseux monoids. We provide characterizations of when $M$ is finite…
We study some of the factorization invariants of the class of Puiseux monoids generated by geometric sequences, and we compare and contrast them with the known results for numerical monoids generated by arithmetic sequences. The class we study consists of all atomic monoids of the form $S_r := \langle r^n \mid n \in \mathbb{N}_0 \rangle,$ where $r$ is a positive rational. As the atomic monoids $S_r$ are nicely generated, we are able to give detailed descriptions of many of their factorization invariants. One distinguishing characteristic of $S_r$ is that all its sets of lengths are arithmetic …
In this paper, we study some of the factorization aspects of rational multicyclic monoids, that is, additive submonoids of the nonnegative rational numbers generated by multiple geometric sequences. In particular, we provide a complete description of the rational multicyclic monoids $M$ that are hereditarily atomic (i.e., every submonoid of $M$ is atomic). Additionally, we show that the sets of lengths of certain rational multicyclic monoids are finite unions of multidimensional arithmetic progressions, while their unions satisfy the Structure Theorem for Unions of Sets of Lengths. Finally, we…
Every Krull monoid has a transfer homomorphism onto a monoid of zero-sum sequences over a subset of its class group. This transfer homomorphism is a crucial tool for studying the arithmetic of Krull monoids. In the present paper, we strengthen and refine this tool for Krull monoids with finitely generated class group.
In this paper, a semigroup algebra consisting of polynomial expressions with coefficients in a field $F$ and exponents in an additive submonoid $M$ of $\mathbb{Q}_{\ge 0}$ is called a Puiseux algebra and denoted by $F[M]$. Here we study the atomic structure of Puiseux algebras. To begin with, we answer the Isomorphism Problem for the class of Puiseux algebras, that is, we show that for a field $F$ if two Puiseux algebras $F[M_1]$ and $F[M_2]$ are isomorphic, then the monoids $M_1$ and $M_2$ must be isomorphic. Then we construct three classes of Puiseux algebras satisfying the following well-kn…
Given an ambient ordered field $K$, a positive monoid is a countably generated additive submonoid of the nonnegative cone of $K$. In this paper, we first generalize several atomic features exhibited by Puiseux monoids of the field of rational numbers to the more general setting of positive monoids of Archimedean fields, accordingly arguing that such generalizations may fail if the ambient field is not Archimedean. In particular, we show that a positive monoid $P$ of an Archimedean field is a BF-monoid provided that $P \! \setminus \! \{0\}$ does not have $0$ as a limit point. Then, we prove ou…
We study direct-sum decompositions of torsion-free, finitely generated modules over a (commutative) Bass ring $R$ through the factorization theory of the corresponding monoid $T(R)$. Results of Levy-Wiegand and Levy-Odenthal together with a study of the local case yield an explicit description of $T(R)$. The monoid is typically neither factorial nor cancellative. Nevertheless, we construct a transfer homomorphism to a monoid of graph agglomerations--a natural class of monoids serving as combinatorial models for the factorization theory of $T(R)$. As a consequence, the monoid $T(R)$ is transfer…
Let $H$ be a cancellative commutative monoid, let $\mathcal{A}(H)$ be the set of atoms of $H$ and let $\widetilde{H}$ be the root closure of $H$. Then $H$ is called transfer Krull if there exists a transfer homomorphism from $H$ into a Krull monoid. It is well known that both half-factorial monoids and Krull monoids are transfer Krull monoids. In spite of many examples and counter examples of transfer Krull monoids (that are neither Krull nor half-factorial), transfer Krull monoids have not been studied systematically (so far) as objects on their own. The main goal of the present paper is to a…
