ON BOUNDING MEASURES OF PRIMENESS IN INTEGRAL DOMAINS

Abstract

Let D be an integral domain. In this paper, we investigate two (integer- or ∞-valued) invariants ω(D, x) and ω(D) which measure how far a nonzero x ∈ D is from being prime and how far an atomic integral domain D is from being a unique factorization domain (UFD), respectively. In particular, we are interested in when there is a nonzero (irreducible) x ∈ D with ω(D, x) = ∞ and the relationship between ω(A, x) and ω(B, x), and ω(A) and ω(B), for an extension A ⊆ B of integral domains and a nonzero x ∈ A.