Primary ideals of finitely generated commutative cancellative monoids (Q5954855)

The authors characterize primary ideals and primary elements, and also give algorithms. Let \((S,+)\) be a finitely generated commutative cancellative monoid, and \(I\) an ideal of \(S\). \(I\) is called a primary ideal of \(S\) if \(I\) satisfies the following condition: \[ [\forall x,y\in S,\;x+y\in I,\;x\notin I]\Rightarrow[\exists k\in\mathbb{N}\setminus\{0\} ky\in I] \] where \(\mathbb{N}\) is the set of non-negative integers. Let \(U(S)\) be the group of units of \(S\), i.e. \(U(S)=\{x\in S\mid x+y=0\) for some \(y\in S\}\). An element \(a\in S\setminus U(S)\) is called a primary element of \(S\) if \(\{a\}+S\) is a primary ideal of \(S\). Let \((S,+)\) be the monoid generated by \(\{s_1,\dots,s_p\}\) and define \(\varphi\colon\mathbb{N}^p\to S\) by \(\varphi(a_1,\dots,a_p)=a_1s_1+\cdots+a_ps_p\). Then \(S\cong\mathbb{N}^p/R\) where \(aRb\) iff \(\varphi(a)=\varphi(b)\). An ideal \(I\) is a primary ideal of \(\mathbb{N}^p/R\) if and only if \(E(I)\) is a primary ideal of \(\mathbb{N}^p\) where \(E(I)=\{x\in\mathbb{N}\mid[x]\in I\}\), \([x]\) is the \(R\)-class containing \(x\). Thus the problem in \(S\) is reduced to that in \(\mathbb{N}^p\). To characterize primary ideals, an order is defined in \(\mathbb{N}^p\) by \((a_1,\dots,a_p)\leq(b_1,\dots,b_p)\) iff \(a_i\leq b_i\) for all \(i\in\{1,\dots,p\}\). When \(A\) is a subset of \(\mathbb{N}^p\), the set \(\text{Minimals}(A)\) is the set of minimal elements of \(A\) with respect to \(\leq\). It is finite. An ideal \(J\) of \(\mathbb{N}^p\) equals \(\text{Minimals}(J)+\mathbb{N}^p\). The following is one of the main theorems. \(J\) is a primary ideal of \(\mathbb{N}^p\) if and only if \([(x_1,\dots,x_p)\in\text{Minimals}(J)\) and \(x_i\neq 0]\Rightarrow[\exists t\in\mathbb{N}\setminus\{0\}\), \(tx_i\in\text{Minimals}(J)]\). If \(I\) is an ideal of \(\mathbb{N}^p/R\), there exist \((m_1,\dots,m_p)\in\mathbb{N}^p\) such that \(I=\{[m_1],\dots,[m_p]\}+N^p/R\). Then \(E(I)=\{x\in\mathbb{N}^p\mid xR(m_i+s)\) for some \(i\in\{1,\dots,q\}\) and some \(s\in\mathbb{N}^p\}\). In particular, let \(I\) be an ideal of a finitely generated commutative cancellative monoid \(S\). By showing examples, the other main result is to give an algorithmic method to determine whether or not \(I\) is a primary ideal of \(S\). The algorithm consists of seven steps in which the sets Minimals play an important role. In the last section, the authors treat primary elements of a cancellative monoid by using the smallest semilattice congruence.