Some remarks on half-factorial orders (Q2568776)

An integral domain \(R\) is called atomic if every nonzero element of \(R\) is a product of irreducibles. For any factorization \(a = p_1 \cdots p_n\) of \(a \in R\) into irreducibles, define its length to be \(n\). Then \(R\) is called a half-factorial domain if \(R\) is atomic and if the lengths of the factorizations of any \(a \in R\) are equal. The author studies relations of these notions to related ones, and proves e.g. that a half-factorial order in a number field has the same class number as its integral closure.