Products of two atoms in Krull monoids and arithmetical characterizations of class groups. (Q2509710)

Let \(H\) be a Krull monoid with finite class group \(G\) such that every class contains a prime divisor. Let \(D(G)\) be the Davenport constant of \(G\). Then a product of two atoms of \(H\) can be written as a product of at most \(D(G)\) atoms. In this paper, the authors make a study of the extremal case and consider the set \(\mathcal U_{2,D(G)}(H)\) defined as the set of all \(\ell\in\mathbb N\) with the following property: there are two atoms \(u,v\in H\) such that \(uv\) can be written as a product of \(\ell\) atoms as well as a product of \(D(G)\) atoms. If \(G\) is cyclic, then \(\mathcal U_{2,D(G)}(H)=\{2,D(G)\}\). If \(G\) has rank two, the authors show that (apart from some exceptional cases) \(\mathcal U_{2,D(G)}(H)=\{2,D(G)\}\setminus\{3\}\). This result is based on the recent characterization of all minimal zero-sum sequences of maximal length over groups of rank two. As an application, they can show that the arithmetical factorization properties encoded in the sets of lengths of a rank 2 prime power order group uniquely characterizes the group.