Semigroups of ideals and isomorphism problems

Abstract

Let $H$ be a monoid (written multiplicatively). We call $H$ Archimedean if, for all $a, b \in H$ such that $b$ is a non-unit, there is an integer $k \ge 1$ with $b^k \in HaH$; strongly Archimedean if, for each $a \in H$, there is an integer $k \ge 1$ such that $HaH$ contains any product of any $k$ non-units of $H$; and duo if $aH = Ha$ for all $a \in H$. We prove that the ideals of two strongly Archimedean, cancellative, duo monoids make up isomorphic semigroups under the induced operation of setwise multiplication if and only if the monoids themselves are isomorphic up to units; and the same holds upon restriction to finitely generated ideals in Archimedean, cancellative, duo monoids. Then we use the previous results to tackle a new case of a problem of Tamura and Shafer from the late 1960s.