Puiseux monoids and transfer homomorphisms

Abstract

There are several families of atomic monoids whose arithmetical invariants have received a great deal of attention during the last two decades. The factorization theory of finitely generated monoids, strongly primary monoids, Krull monoids, and C-monoids are among the most systematically studied. Puiseux monoids, which are additive submonoids of $\mathbb{Q}_{\ge 0}$ consisting of nonnegative rational numbers, have only been studied recently. In this paper, we provide evidence that this family comprises plenty of monoids with a basically unexplored atomic structure. We do this by showing that the arithmetical invariants of the well-studied atomic monoids mentioned earlier cannot be transferred to most Puiseux monoids via homomorphisms that preserve atomic configurations, i.e., transfer homomorphisms. Specifically, we show that transfer homomorphisms from a non-finitely generated atomic Puiseux monoid to a finitely generated monoid do not exist. We also find a large family of Puiseux monoids that fail to be strongly primary. In addition, we prove that the only nontrivial Puiseux monoid that accepts a transfer homomorphism to a Krull monoid is $\mathbb{N}_0$