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A characterisation of atomicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2023

SALVATORE TRINGALI*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical Sciences, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, 050024 China. e-mail: salvo.tringali@gmail.com

Abstract

In a 1968 issue of the Proceedings, P. M. Cohn famously claimed that a commutative domain is atomic if and only if it satisfies the ascending chain condition on principal ideals (ACCP). Some years later, a counterexample was however provided by A. Grams, who showed that every commutative domain with the ACCP is atomic, but not vice versa. This has led to the problem of finding a sensible (ideal-theoretic) characterisation of atomicity.

The question (explicitly stated on p. 3 of A. Geroldinger and F. Halter–Koch’s 2006 monograph on factorisation) is still open. We settle it here by using the language of monoids and preorders.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Cambridge Philosophical Society

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