Longest and Shortest Factorizations in Embedding Dimension Three

Abstract

For a numerical monoid $\langle n_1, \dots, n_k \rangle$ minimally generated by $n_1, \dots, n_k \in \mathbb{N}$ with $n_1 < \cdots < n_k$, the longest and shortest factorization lengths of an element $x$, denoted as $L(x)$ and $\ell(x)$, respectively, follow the identities $L(x+n_1) = L(x) + 1$ and $\ell(x+n_k) = \ell(x) + 1$ for sufficiently large elements $x$. We characterize when these identities hold for all elements of numerical monoids of embedding dimension three.