Decomposition of a numerical semigroup as an intersection of irreducible numerical semigroups. (Q1420715)

A numerical semigroup is an additive submonoid of \(\mathbb{N}\) which generates \(\mathbb{Z}\) as a group. A numerical semigroup is said to be irreducible if it can not be expressed as an intersection of two numerical semigroups properly containing it; every numerical semigroup is an intersection of a finite number of irreducible numerical semigroups. For a numerical semigroup \(S\), let \(r(S)\) denote the least positive integer \(n\) such that \(S=S_1\cap\cdots\cap S_n\) with each \(S_i\) an irreducible numerical semigroup. In this paper, the authors determine upper and lower bounds for \(r(S)\). They also characterize the numerical semigroups \(S\) for which each \(S_i\) is a symmetric numerical semigroup or each \(S_i\) is a pseudo-symmetric numerical semigroup.