On a result of James and Niven concerning unique factorization in congruence semigroups. (Q2470897)

In Hilbert's monoid \(1+4\mathbb{N}_0=\{1,5,9,13,\dots\}\) the factorization into irreducible factors is non unique. Hilbert's monoid is a special example of a congruence monoid and by a classical result of James and Niven, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is valid in a congruence monoid \(M\) if and only if \(M\) consists of all numbers which are coprime to a fixed number \(n\in\mathbb{N}\). In the present note the authors investigate the converse situation, where \(M\) consists of all numbers, which are not coprime to a fixed number \(n\in\mathbb{N}\). They show in this case that the length of the factorization is unique. For further results in this direction we refer to \textit{A. Geroldinger} and \textit{F. Halter-Koch} [Acta Arith. 112, No. 3, 263-296 (2004; Zbl 1057.13003)] and to \textit{F. Halter-Koch} [Semigroup Forum 42, No. 1, 59-62 (1991; Zbl 0734.20027)].