Survey article: Graphical representations of factorizations in commutative rings (Q1951337)

Due to the idea of transforming a ring-theoretic question into a graph-theoretic one, the factorization theory in commutative rings has recently taken an interesting turn by looking to graph theory. This paper surveys the recent results on this area, particularly on irreducible divisor graphs of commutative rings. A domain \(D\) is called an \textit{atomic domain} if each nonzero, nonunit element can be factored into a product of irreducible elements. If this factorization is unique (up to associates), \(D\) is an \textit{unique factorization domain} (UFD). If every nonzero nonunit element has only finitely many distinct noassociate irreducible divisors then \(D\) is a \textit{finite factorization domain} (FFD). If the number of terms in every factorization of a given nonzero nonunit element into irreducibles is constant, \(D\) is \textit{half-factorial domains} (HFD). If there is a bound on the length of factorizations into products of irreducible elements for each nonzero nonunit element, \(D\) is \textit{boundary factorization domains} (BFD). This paper first surveys characterization results for above classes of domains via their irreducible divisor graphs. Next, the paper discusses a compressed version of the irreducible divisor graph; investigates the homology and simplicial complex structure of irreducible divisor graphs. In addition, the paper also surveys some results on the development irreducible divisor graphs to commutative rings with zero-divisors and investigates graph invariants of these graphs as well as realization results and provides a detailed discussion of such graphs in numerical monoids and numerical semigroup rings. The paper surveys results in recent works from 2007 of the authors of this paper and several other authors: J. Coykendall, J. Maney, J. Hobson, D. Bachman, H. Smallwood, D. Swartz, C. Edwards, \dots .