Irreducible ideals of finitely generated commutative monoids (Q5936162)

In this fine paper, it is given a characterization of the irreducible ideals of finitely generated commutative monoids \(S\). If \(p\) is the number of generators of \(S\), \(S\) can be studied from a congruence \(\varphi\colon\mathbb{N}^p\to S\) and to decide if an ideal \(I\) of \(S\) is irreducible, the authors first give a decomposition of \(I\) into irreducibles which depends on a decomposition of \(\varphi^{-1}\) into ideals of \(\mathbb{N}^p\). That decomposition is computable as the algorithms of Section 5 of the paper show. Finally, notice that if \(I\) and \(J\) are irreducible ideals in \(\mathbb{N}^p\), then \(I\cup J\) is so, and an ideal \(I\) of a monoid \(S\) is irreducible if, and only if, \((a+S)\cap(b+S)\subseteq I\) implies either \(a+S\subseteq I\) or \(b+S\subseteq I\) for all \(a,b\in S\). This type of facts is responsible that the theory of this paper does not apply to ideals in commutative rings.