On Irreducible Divisor Graphs in Commutative Rings with Zero-Divisors

In this paper, we continue the program initiated by I. Beck's now classical paper concerning zero-divisor graphs of commutative rings. After the success of much research regarding zero-divisor graphs, many authors have turned their attention to studying divisor graphs of non-zero elements in the ring, the so called irreducible divisor graph. In this paper, we construct several different associated irreducible divisor graphs of a commutative ring with unity using various choices for the definition of irreducible and atomic in the literature. We continue pursuing the program of exploiting the interaction between algebraic structures and associated graphs to further our understanding of both objects. Factorization in rings with zero-divisors is considerably more complicated than integral domains; however, we find that many of the same techniques can be extended to rings with zero-divisors. This allows us to not only find graph theoretic characterizations of many of the finite factorization properties that commutative rings may possess, but also understand graph theoretic properties of graphs associated with certain commutative rings satisfying nice factorization properties.
Comment: 21 pages, in review