The Category of Factorization

Abstract

We introduce and investigate the category of factorization of a multiplicative, commutative, cancellative, pre-ordered monoid $A$, which we denote $\mathcal{F}(A)$. The objects of $\mathcal{F}(A)$ are factorizations of elements of $A$, and the morphisms in $\mathcal{F}(A)$ encode combinatorial similarities and differences between the factorizations. We pay particular attention to the divisibility pre-order and to the monoid $A=D\setminus\{0\}$ where $D$ is an integral domain. Among other results, we show that $\mathcal{F}(A)$ is a symmetric and strict monoidal category with weak equivalences and compute the associated category of fractions obtained by inverting the weak equivalences. Also, we use this construction to characterize various factorization properties of integral domains: atomicity, unique factorization, and so on.