The catenary and tame degree in finitely generated commutative cancellative monoids. (Q2501125)

Let \(S\) be a commutative cancellative atomic monoid. The catenary degree and the tame degree of \(S\) are (somewhat technical) combinatorial invariants of \(S\) which describe the behavior of chains of factorizations in \(S\) (see for example, the book Non-unique factorizations. Algebraic, combinatorial and analytic theory by \textit{A. Geroldinger} and \textit{F. Halter-Koch} [Pure Appl. Math. 278. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman \& Hall/CRC (2006; Zbl 1113.11002)]). In this paper, the authors give methods to compute both invariants when \(S\) is finitely generated. These methods are based on the computation of a minimal presentation of \(S\), and there are algorithms to compute this. Several examples are given to illustrate the theory.