The maximal denumerant of a numerical semigroup. (Q1955592)

A numerical semigroup is a submonoid of \(\mathbb N\) with finite complement in \(\mathbb N\), where \(\mathbb N\) denotes the set of nonnegative integers. Every numerical semigroup \(S\) admits a unique minimal generating system, that is, a subset \(A\) of \(S\) such that every element is a linear combination of elements in \(A\) with coefficients in \(\mathbb N\), and such that no proper subset of \(A\) has this property. Moreover, this set has finitely many elements, say \(A=\{a_1,\dots,a_t\}\). Thus given \(s\in S\), there exists \((c_1,\dots,c_t)\in\mathbb N^n\) such that \(s=\sum_{i=1}^tc_ia_i\). We say that \((c_1,\dots,c_t)\) is a factorization of \(s\), that its length is \(c_1+\cdots+c_t\). Every \(s\in S\) has finitely many factorizations, and its cardinality is known as the denumerant of \(s\in S\). The maximal denumerant of \(s\in S\) is the number of factorizations of \(s\) having maximal length, denoted by \(\mathrm d_{\max}(s;S)\). The authors proved [in \textit{L. Bryant}, \textit{J. Hamblin} and \textit{L. Jones}, J. Commut. Algebra 4, No. 4, 489-503 (2012; Zbl 1270.20062)] that the maximum of the set \(\{\mathrm d_{\max}(s;S)\mid s\in S\}\) exists, and they call it the maximal denumerant of \(S\), \(\mathrm d_{\max}(S)\). In that paper, they also gave formulas for the maximal denumerant of numerical semigroups with embedding dimension less that or equal to three. Now the authors present an algorithm to compute the maximal denumerant of any numerical semigroup, which has the advantage that it can be easily implemented. This procedure depends on the adjustment and blowup of a numerical semigroup. Given an element \(s\) in a numerical semigroup, its order, denoted by \(\mathrm{ord}(s;S)\) is the maximal length of the factorizations of \(s\) in terms of the minimal generators of \(S\). The adjustment of \(s\) is then defined as \(\mathrm{adj}(s)=s-\mathrm{ord}(s)e\), where \(e\) is the multiplicity of \(S\) (the smallest positive integer in \(S\)). If \(S\) is minimally generated by \(\{a_1,\dots,a_t\}\), then its blowup \(B\) is the numerical semigroup generated by \(\{a_1,a_2-a_1,\dots,a_t-a_1\}\). It turns out that \(\mathrm{adj}(S)=\{\mathrm{adj}(s)\mid s\in S\}\subseteq B\) and \(\mathrm{adj}(S)\) has finitely many elements. Moreover \(\mathrm{Ap}(B;e)=\{b\in B\mid b-e\not\in B\}\subseteq\mathrm{adj}(S)\). The authors particularize their results to several families of numerical semigroups. The first is that of additive semigroups, which are semigroups such that \(\mathrm{ord}(s+e;S)=1+\mathrm{ord}(s;S)\) for all \(s\in S\), or equivalently, \(\mathrm{adj}(S)=\mathrm{Ap}(B;e)\). To compute the maximal denumerant of a semigroup in this family, one has just to look at the denumerant of the factorizations of the maximal elements in \(\mathrm{Ap}(B;e)\) in terms of \(\{a_1,a_2-a_1,\dots,a_t-a_1\}\). The next family studied is that of supersymmetric numerical semigroups. These are semigroups that are additive, symmetric and for every \(w\in\mathrm{Ap}(S;e)\), \(\mathrm{ord}(w;S)+\mathrm{ord}(f+e-w;S)=\mathrm{ord}(f+e;S)\), where \(f\) is the Frobenius number of \(S\) (the largest integer not in \(S\); the symmetry of \(S\) is equivalent to \(f+e-w\in S\) for all \(w\in\mathrm{Ap}(S;e)\)). For these semigroups the maximal denumerant of \(S\) is just the denumerant of the factorizations of \(e\) plus the Frobenius number of \(B\) in terms of \(\{a_1,a_2-a_1,\dots,a_t-a_1\}\). Finally, the authors also provide a closed formula for the maximal denumerant of a numerical semigroup generated by an arithmetic sequence.