On length densities

Abstract

For a commutative cancellative monoid $M$, we introduce the notion of the length density of both a nonunit $x\in M$, denoted $\mathrm{LD}(x)$, and the entire monoid $M$, denoted $\mathrm{LD}(M)$. This invariant is related to three widely studied invariants in the theory of non-unit factorizations, $L(x)$, $\ell (x)$, and $\rho (x)$. We consider some general properties of $\mathrm{LD}(x)$ and $\mathrm{LD}(M)$ and give a wide variety of examples using numerical semigroups, Puiseux monoids, and Krull monoids. While we give an example of a monoid $M$ with irrational length density, we show that if $M$ is finitely generated, then $\mathrm{LD}(M)$ is rational and there is a nonunit element $x\in M$ with $\mathrm{LD}(M)=\mathrm{LD}(x)$ (such a monoid is said to have accepted length density). While it is well-known that the much studied asymptotic versions of $L(x)$, $\ell (x)$ and $\rho (x)$ (denoted $\overline{L}(x)$, $\overline{\ell }(x)$, and $\overline{\rho }(x)$) always exist, we show the somewhat surprising result that $\overline{\mathrm{LD}}(x)={\lim }_{n\to \infty }\mathrm{LD}(x^n)$ may not exist. We also give some finiteness conditions on $M$ that force the existence of $\overline{\mathrm{LD}}(x)$.