Monoids determined by a homogeneous linear Diophantine equation and the half-factorial property (Q1579723)

The aim of this paper is to investigate special additive monoids \[ M= M(a_1,\dots, a_n)= \Biggl\{(r_1,\dots, r_n)\in N^n \Biggl/ \sum_{j=1}^N r_j a_j= 0\Biggr\}, \] where \(a_1,\dots, a_n\) are integers, \(N\) is the set of all nonnegative integers, and the (additive) operation is defined componentwise. (Further it is assumed that \(n\geq 2\), \(a_i\) are nonzero, not of equal sign and \(\gcd (a_1,\dots, a_n)=1\).) It is shown that the monoid \(M\) is a Krull monoid (it possesses a divisor theory), but it cannot be realized as a multiplicative monoid of a Krull domain. In this paper the arithmetic of the monoids \(M\) is studied. In particular it is proved (Proposition 1.2.1) that the divisor class group \(\text{Cl} (M(a_1,\dots, a_n))\) of \(M(a_1,\dots, a_n)\) has only finitely many divisor classes containing prime divisors. For positive integers \(a_1,\dots, a_n, b,b_1,\dots, b_k\), \(n\geq 2\), \(k\geq 2\), the authors calculate the divisor class groups as follows (Theorem 1.3): \[ \text{Cl} (M(a_1,\dots, a_n,-b))\cong Z_{b/c}, \qquad \text{Cl} (M(a_1,\dots, a_n, -b_1,\dots, -b_k))\cong Z, \] where \(c= \prod_{i=1}^n \gcd(\{b\}\cup \{a_j\}_{j\neq i})\). The characterization of monoids \(M\) to be factorial and half-factorial, respectively, is presented.