The monotone catenary degree of Krull monoids. (Q351098)

Let \(H\) be an atomic monoid. For a factorization \(z\) of an element \(a\) in \(H\), the length of \(z\), \(|z|\), is the number of atoms (counting repetitions) appearing in that factorization. The distance between two factorizations \(z\) and \(z'\), \(\mathrm d(z,z')\), is the maximum of the lengths of \(z\) and \(z'\) after removing the common part (greatest common divisor). The monotone catenary degree of \(H\), \(c_{\text{mon}}(H)\), is the smallest integer \(N\) with the following property: for every \(a\in H\) and any two factorizations \(z\) and \(z'\) of \(a\), there exists a chain of factorizations \(z_1,\dots,z_t\) such that \(z_1=z\), \(z_t=z'\), \(\mathrm d(z_i,z_{i+1})\leq N\) and \(|z_i|\leq |z_{i+1}|\) for all \(i\in\{1,\dots,t-1\}\). This paper offers upper bounds for \(c_{\text{mon}}(H)\), with \(H\) a Krull monoid with finite class group \(G\) such that every class has a prime divisor. The bounds depend on \(|G|\) and \(\mathsf D(G)\), the Davenport constant of \(G\). The authors explicitly compute the monotone catenary degree for Krull monoids with class group \(G\) in \(\{C_3,C_2^2,C_4,C_2^3\}\), and lower bounds for \(G\) not cyclic. The authors have done these computations in some cases by hand. The reason is that for instance in the case of \(C_2^3\), the known algorithms for computing the monotone catenary degree require solving a system of 8 linear Diophantine equations and 43 unknowns over the nonnegative integers, and then for each solution find all possible associated factorizations and the monotone catenary degree for these sets of factorizations.