Divisibility Theory of Commutative Rings and Ideal Distributivity

Abstract

We begin by investigating the class of commutative unital rings in which no two distinct elements divide the same elements. We prove that this class forms a finitely axiomatizable, relatively ideal distributive quasivariety, and it equals the quasivariety generated by the class of integral domains with trivial unit group. We end the paper by proving a representation theorem that provides more evidence to the conjecture that B\'ezout monoids describe exactly the monoids of finitely generated ideals of commutative unital rings with distributive ideal lattice.