English

Spontaneous atomicity for polynomial rings with zero-divisors

Commutative Algebra 2016-12-20 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we show that it is possible for a commutative ring with identity to be non-atomic (that is, there exist non-zero nonunits that cannot be factored into irreducibles) and yet have a strongly atomic polynomial extension. In particular, we produce a commutative ring with identity, R, that is antimatter (that is, R has no irreducibles whatsoever) such that R[t] is strongly atomic. What is more, given any nonzero nonunit f(t) in R[t] then there is a factorization of f(t) into irreducibles of length no more than deg(f(t)) + 2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.05976,
  title  = {Spontaneous atomicity for polynomial rings with zero-divisors},
  author = {Jim Coykendall and Stacy Trentham},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.05976},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:27:33.185Z