Nonunique factorization in a congruence submonoid

ID: nonunique-factorization-in-a-congruence-submonoid

The congruence submonoid of the positive integers with modulus ten has four distinct irreducible elements of a commutative monoid with equal pairwise products. Their ordinary prime factors are respectively . None of these proper prime factors is congruent to one modulo ten. The Euclid lemma proves that a product of two distinct primes has no other proper positive divisors, so all four are irreducible in this monoid. This gives nonunique factorization without assuming the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.

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