On products of \(k\) atoms. (Q1027743)

Let \(R\) be a Noetherian integral domain and denote by \(V_k(R)\) the set of all integers \(m\) with the property that there exists an element of \(R\) having factorization into irreducibles of length \(k\) and \(m\). The authors show that for a large class of domains the set \(V_k(R)\) is very close to an arithmetic progression. They work actually in a more general setting, dealing with factorizations in atomic monoids, i.e. commutative cancellative semigroups with unit element in which every non-unit is a product of irreducible elements.