Let M be a Puiseux monoid, that is, a monoid consisting of nonnegative rationals (under standard addition). In this paper, we study factorisations in atomic Puiseux monoids through the lens of their associated Betti graphs. The Betti graph of $b \in M$ is the graph whose vertices are the factorisations of b with edges between factorisations that share at least one atom. If the Betti graph associated to b is disconnected, then we call b a Betti element of M. We explicitly compute the set of Betti elements for a large class of Puiseux monoids (the atomisations of certain infinite sequences of rationals). The process of atomisation is quite useful in studying the arithmetic of Puiseux monoids, and it has been actively considered in recent literature. This leads to an argument that for every positive integer n, there exists an atomic Puiseux monoid with exactly n Betti elements.

We propose generating functions, $\textrm {RGF}_p(x)$, for the quotients of numerical semigroups which are related to the Sylvester denumerant. Using MacMahon’s partition analysis, we can obtain $\textrm {RGF}_p(x)$ by extracting the constant term of a rational function. We use $\textrm {RGF}_p(x)$ to give a system of generators for the quotient of the numerical semigroup $\langle a_1,a_2,a_3\rangle $ by p for a small positive integer p, and we characterise the generators of ${\langle A\rangle }/{p}$ for a general numerical semigroup A and any positive integer p.

In a 1968 issue of the Proceedings, P. M. Cohn famously claimed that a commutative domain is atomic if and only if it satisfies the ascending chain condition on principal ideals (ACCP). Some years later, a counterexample was however provided by A. Grams, who showed that every commutative domain with the ACCP is atomic, but not vice versa. This has led to the problem of finding a sensible (ideal-theoretic) characterisation of atomicity.

The question (explicitly stated on p. 3 of A. Geroldinger and F. Halter–Koch’s 2006 monograph on factorisation) is still open. We settle it here by using the language of monoids and preorders.

Let R be a Mori domain with complete integral closure $\widehat R$, nonzero conductor $\mathfrak f = (R: \widehat R)$, and suppose that both v-class groups ${{\cal C}_v}(R)$ and ${{\cal C}_v}(3\widehat R)$ are finite. If $R \mathfrak f$ is finite, then the elasticity of R is either rational or infinite. If $R \mathfrak f$ is artinian, then unions of sets of lengths of R are almost arithmetical progressions with the same difference and global bound. We derive our results in the setting of v-noetherian monoids.

We introduce a newinvariant describing the structure of sets of lengths in atomicmonoids and domains. For an atomic monoid $H$, let ${{\Delta }_{\rho }}\left( H \right)$ be the set of all positive integers d that occur as differences of arbitrarily long arithmetical progressions contained in sets of lengths havingmaximal elasticity $\rho \left( H \right)$. We study ${{\Delta }_{\rho }}\left( H \right)$ for transfer Krull monoids of finite type (including commutative Krull domains with finite class group) with methods from additive combinatorics, and also for a class of weakly Krull domains (including orders in algebraic number fields) for which we use ideal theoretic methods.

If H is a monoid and a = u1 ··· uk ∈ H with atoms (irreducible elements) u1, … , uk, then k is a length of a, the set of lengths of a is denoted by Ⅼ(a), and ℒ(H) = {Ⅼ(a) | a ∈ H} is the system of sets of lengths of H. Let R be a hereditary Noetherian prime (HNP) ring. Then every element of the monoid of non-zero-divisors R• can be written as a product of atoms. We show that if R is bounded and every stably free right R-ideal is free, then there exists a transfer homomorphism from R• to the monoid B of zero-sum sequences over a subset Gmax(R) of the ideal class group G(R). This implies that the systems of sets of lengths, together with further arithmetical invariants, of the monoids R• and B coincide. It is well known that commutative Dedekind domains allow transfer homomorphisms to monoids of zero-sum sequences, and the arithmetic of the latter has been the object of much research. Our approach is based on the structure theory of finitely generated projective modules over HNP rings, as established in the recent monograph by Levy and Robson. We complement our results by giving an example of a non-bounded HNP ring in which every stably free right R-ideal is free but which does not allow a transfer homomorphism to a monoid of zero-sum sequences over any subset of its ideal class group.

Let $H$ be a Krull monoid with finite class group $G$ such that every class contains a prime divisor (for example, a ring of integers in an algebraic number field or a holomorphy ring in an algebraic function field). The catenary degree $\mathsf{c}(H)$ of $H$ is the smallest integer $N$ with the following property: for each $a\in H$ and each pair of factorizations $z,z^{\prime }$ of $a$, there exist factorizations $z=z_{0},\dots ,z_{k}=z^{\prime }$ of $a$ such that, for each $i\in [1,k]$, $z_{i}$ arises from $z_{i-1}$ by replacing at most $N$ atoms from $z_{i-1}$ by at most $N$ new atoms. To exclude trivial cases, suppose that $|G|\geq 3$. Then the catenary degree depends only on the class group $G$ and we have $\mathsf{c}(H)\in [3,\mathsf{D}(G)]$, where $\mathsf{D}(G)$ denotes the Davenport constant of $G$. The cases when $\mathsf{c}(H)\in \{3,4,\mathsf{D}(G)\}$ have been previously characterized (see Theorem A). Based on a characterization of the catenary degree determined in the paper by Geroldinger et al. [‘The catenary degree of Krull monoids I’, J. Théor. Nombres Bordeaux23 (2011), 137–169], we determine the class groups satisfying $\mathsf{c}(H)=\mathsf{D}(G)-1$. Apart from the extremal cases mentioned, the precise value of $\mathsf{c}(H)$ is known for no further class groups.