Spontaneous atomicity for polynomial rings with zero-divisors (Q2396798)

Let \(R\) be a commutative ring with identity. An element \(a\in R\) is said to be an atom if whenever \(a = bc\), then the principal ideal \((a)=(b)\) or \((a) = (c)\), and \(a\in R\) is a strong atom if whenever \(a = bc\), then either \(b\) or \(c\) is a unit in \(R\). \(R\) is said to be (strongly) atomic if every nonzero nonunit element in \(R\) is a product of (strong) atoms. In this paper, the authors showed that it is possible for a commutative ring \(R\) with identity to be non-atomic (that is, there exist nonzero nonunits in \(R\) that cannot be factored into irreducibles) and yet have a strongly atomic polynomial extension. In particular, they produced a commutative ring \(R\) with identity, that is antimatter (that is, \(R\) has no irreducibles whatsoever) such that \(R[t]\) is strongly atomic. Moreover, they showed that given any nonzero nonunit polynomial \(f(t)\in R[t]\), then there is a factorization of \(f(t)\) into irreducibles of length no more than deg\((f(t))+2\).