Let R = K[x, σ] be the skew polynomial ring over a field K, where σ is an automorphism of K of finite order. We show that prime elements in R correspond to completely prime one-sided ideals – a notion introduced by Reyes in 2010. This extends the natural correspondence between prime elements and prime ideals in commutative polynomial rings.

We introduce a newinvariant describing the structure of sets of lengths in atomicmonoids and domains. For an atomic monoid $H$, let ${{\Delta }_{\rho }}\left( H \right)$ be the set of all positive integers d that occur as differences of arbitrarily long arithmetical progressions contained in sets of lengths havingmaximal elasticity $\rho \left( H \right)$. We study ${{\Delta }_{\rho }}\left( H \right)$ for transfer Krull monoids of finite type (including commutative Krull domains with finite class group) with methods from additive combinatorics, and also for a class of weakly Krull domains (including orders in algebraic number fields) for which we use ideal theoretic methods.

If H is a monoid and a = u1 ··· uk ∈ H with atoms (irreducible elements) u1, … , uk, then k is a length of a, the set of lengths of a is denoted by Ⅼ(a), and ℒ(H) = {Ⅼ(a) | a ∈ H} is the system of sets of lengths of H. Let R be a hereditary Noetherian prime (HNP) ring. Then every element of the monoid of non-zero-divisors R• can be written as a product of atoms. We show that if R is bounded and every stably free right R-ideal is free, then there exists a transfer homomorphism from R• to the monoid B of zero-sum sequences over a subset Gmax(R) of the ideal class group G(R). This implies that the systems of sets of lengths, together with further arithmetical invariants, of the monoids R• and B coincide. It is well known that commutative Dedekind domains allow transfer homomorphisms to monoids of zero-sum sequences, and the arithmetic of the latter has been the object of much research. Our approach is based on the structure theory of finitely generated projective modules over HNP rings, as established in the recent monograph by Levy and Robson. We complement our results by giving an example of a non-bounded HNP ring in which every stably free right R-ideal is free but which does not allow a transfer homomorphism to a monoid of zero-sum sequences over any subset of its ideal class group.

We shall give necessary and sufficient conditions on the ring R and the group G for the group-ring RG to be a prime P. I. ring with the unique factorisation property as defined in [5].

An atomic integral domain with conjugation has unique (in the sense of Theorem 6 below) factorization of atomic factors if it is an LCM domain. If the LCM hypothesis is dropped not even the number of atomic factors in a complete factorization of an element need be unique.