HIGHER-ORDER CLASS GROUPS AND BLOCK MONOIDS OF KRULL MONOIDS WITH TORSION CLASS GROUP

Extensions of the notion of a class group and a block monoid associated to a Krull monoid with torsion class group are introduced and investigated. Instead of assigning to a Krull monoid only one abelian group (the class group) and one monoid of zero-sum sequences (the block monoid), we assign to it a recursively defined family of abelian groups, the first being the class group, and do alike for the block monoid. These investigations are motivated by the aim of gaining a more detailed understanding of the arithmetic of Krull monoids, including Dedekind and Krull domains, both from a technical and conceptual point of view. To illustrate our method, some first arithmetical applications are presented.

Elasticity in certain block monoids via the Euclidean table

This paper continues the study begun in [GEROLDINGER, A.: On non-unique factorizations into irreducible elements II, Colloq. Math. Soc. János Bolyai 51 (1987), 723–757] concerning factorization properties of block monoids of the form ℬ(ℤn, S) where S = $$\{ \bar 1,\bar a\} $$ (hereafter denoted ℬa(n)). We introduce in Section 2 the notion of a Euclidean table and show in Theorem 2.8 how it can be used to identify the irreducible elements of ℬa(n). In Section 3 we use the Euclidean table to compute the elasticity of ℬa(n) (Theorem 3.4). Section 4 considers the problem, for a fixed value of n, of computing the complete set of elasticities of the ℬa(n) monoids. When n = p is a prime integer, Proposition 4.12 computes the three smallest possible elasticities of the ℬa(p).

ON FACTORIZATION IN BLOCK MONOIDS FORMED BY $\{\bar{1},\bar{a}\}$ IN $\mathbb{Z}_{n}$

We consider the factorization properties of block monoids on $\mathbb{Z}_n$ determined by subsets of the form $S_a=\{\bar{1},\bar{a}\}$. We denote such a block monoid by $\mathcal{B}_a(n)$. In §2, we provide a method based on the division algorithm for determining the irreducible elements of $\mathcal{B}_a(n)$. Section 3 offers a method to determine the elasticity of $\mathcal{B}_a(n)$ based solely on the cross number. Section 4 applies the results of §3 to investigate the complete set of elasticities of Krull monoids with divisor class group $\mathbb{Z}_n$.AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 20M14; 20D60; 13F05