On noncommutative bounded factorization domains and prime rings

Abstract

A ring has bounded factorizations if every cancellative nonunit a ∈ R can be written as a product of atoms and there is a bound λ(a) on the lengths of such factorizations. The bounded factorization property is one of the most basic finiteness properties in the study of non-unique factorizations. Every commutative noetherian domain has bounded factorizations, but it is open whether such a result holds in the noncommutative setting. We provide sufficient conditions for a noncommutative noetherian prime ring to have bounded factorizations. Moreover, we construct a (noncommutative) finitely presented semigroup algebra that is an atomic domain but does not satisfy the ascending chain condition on principal right or left ideals (ACCP).