On divisor-closed submonoids and minimal distances in finitely generated monoids (Q1733316)

For a finitely generated commutative cancellative monoid \(H\), the authors study the set \(\Delta^*(H)\) of minimal distances occurring in the theory of non-unique factorizations, developed in the book by \textit{A. Geroldinger} and \textit{F. Halter-Koch} [Non-unique factorizations. Algebraic, combinatorial and analytic theory. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman \& Hall/CRC (2006; Zbl 1113.11002)]. They show that the divisor-closed submonoids \(A\) of \(H\) form a finite lattice (Theorem 4), determine the sets of generators for them, and show how to compute \(\Delta^*(A)\). In the case when \(H\) is an affine semigroup a geometric approach is used to describe its divisor-closed submonoids (Theorem 15). This is used to present an algorithm to compute \(\Delta^*(H)\) for every finitely generated \(H\).