Report on Numerical Semigroups

Edgar Elizeche
October 23, 2018

The main book regarding the subject is [4]. It deals with the main as-
pects concerning the subject, from the definition of a numerical semigroup,
some of its properties like the Frobenius number, the type, the embedding
dimension, some qualities of the numerical semigroup, like whether it is
Arf or not, wheter it is symmetrical, etc.
The usefulness of these properties is shown when applying the theory
to algebraic geometry, in particular to valuations of analytically unramified
one-dimensional local Noetherian domains. For a field K, the valuation of
the ring K[[tn1 , . . . , tne ]] is precisely the numerical semigroup generated by
n1 , . . . , ne .

1 Definitions
We denote the smallest submonoid generated by the numbers by the set A
as hAi. A submonoid of N is called a numerical semigroup if its complement
is finite. It is easy to see the following to be true.

Theorem 1. If A is a non-empty subset of N. Then hAi is a numerical

semigroup if and only if gcd A = 1.

An interesting question to ask about the numerical semigroup is re-

lated to the set of generators, and the following gives us an answer.

Theorem 2. Let S be a numerical semigroup, and let S ∗ = S\{0}. Then the

set S ∗ \(S ∗ + S ∗ ) is the minimal set of generators. Further, any generating
set contains the above set.

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 The cardinality of the minimal generating set is called the embedding
dimension of the numerical semigroup.
One of the most important tools for the study of numerical semi-
groups is the famous Apéry Set, introduced in [1].

Definition 1. For any n ∈ S , we define

Ap(S, n) = {s ∈ S|s − n ∈
/ S}

It can also be written as

Ap(S, n) = {wi|wi = min{w ≡ i (mod n) & w ∈ S}}

Another important property of a numerical semigroup is its Frobe-

nius number, which is the biggest number which does not belong to it,
sometimes denoted by F (S). Along with the Frobenius number, the genus,
sometimes denoted by g(S), is another important property. It is defined to
be the cardinality of N\S.
Among the numbers x that don’t belong to the semigroup, the ones
that satisfy x + s ∈ S ∗ for every s ∈ S ∗ are called pseudo-Frobenius numbers
(note that the Frobenius number satisfies this property, in particular is the
biggest number satisfying this property). The set of all pseudo-Frobenius
numbers is denoted by P F (S). It’s cardinality is important as well, so it
gets it’s own name, the type of S, or t(S).
Important formulae to express F (S) and g(S) in terms of the Apéry
Set are the following

Theorem 3 ([6]). Let S be a numerical semigroup and n a non-zero element

in it. Then

1. F (S) = max(Ap(S, n)) − n

P 
2. g(S) = n1 w∈Ap(S,n) w − n−1
2

An interesting question, set up by Eliahou and Alfonsı́n [2], is to ask

how many semigroups exists with a given genus. They attempt an answer
for semigroups generated by two elements.

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2 Particular cases
In the special case where the embedding dimension is 3, studied in [5], Rosa-
les and Garcı́a-Sánchez, determined that if S = hn1 , n2 , n3 i where gcd(n1 , n2 ) =
gcd(n2 , n3 ) = gcd(n1 , n3 ) = 1 then one can determine F (S), g(S) and
P F (S), by first finding six parameters. We define,

ci = min{x ∈ N\{0} | xni ∈ hnj , nk i}

or, rewriting it, ci is the minimum number such that

c1 n1 = r12 n2 + r13 n3
c2 n2 = r21 n1 + r23 n3
c3 n3 = r31 n1 + r32 n2

where rij ∈ N. Then,

1. F (S) = c1 n1 + max{r23 n3 , r32 n2 } − (n1 + n2 + n3 )

2. g(S) = 21 ((c1 − 1)n1 + (c2 − 1)n2 + (c3 − 1)n3 − c1 c2 c3 + 1).

3. P F (S) = {(c3 − 1)n3 + (r12 − 1)n2 − n1 , (c2 − 1)n2 + (r13 − 1)n3 − n1 }

and hence t(S) = 2.

Another interesting set of results is to check this properties for fam-

ilies of numerical semigroups. In particular, a result found by Tripathi [7],
where he studies this properties for the numerical semigroup A generated
by {a, ha + d, ha + bd, . . . , ha + bk d}. There he shows,

F (A) = a(hq − 1) + d(qbk − 1)+

 
max ha (k(b − 1) − 1) , max (ha · wb (x) + d(x + 1))
0≤x≤r

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as well as,
r
!
1 X 1
g(A) = h q (q − 1 + k(b − 1)) bk + q(r + 1) + wb (x) + (a − 1)(d − 1)
2 x=0
2

where q = ⌊ a−1
bk
⌋, r ≡ a − 1 (mod b)k and 0 ≤ r < bk . Also wb (x) represents
the sum of the digits of x when written in base b.
On another interesting result B. Gill et al. [3] found the Frobenius
number of the numerical semigroup generated by a primitive Pythagorean
triplet. The formula turns out to be quite neat:

F (m2 − n2 , 2mn, m2 + n2 ) = (m − 1)(m2 − n2 ) + (m − 1)(2mn) − (m2 + n2 )

References
[1] R. Apéry, Sur les branches superlinéaires des courbes algébriques, C. R.
Acad. Sci. Paris 222(1946), 1198–1200.

[2] S. Eliahou and Jorge Ramı́rez Alfonsı́n, Two-Generator Numerical Semi-

groups and Fermat and Mersenne Numbers, SIAM J. Discrete Math., 25(2)
(2011), 622–630.

[3] Byung Keon Gil, Ji-Woo Han, Tae Hyun Kim, Ryun Han Koo, Bon Woo
Lee, Jaehoon Lee, Kyeong Sik Nam, Hyeon Woo Park, and Poo-Sung Park,
Frobenius number of Pythagorean Triples, Int. J. Number Theory.,11
(2015), 613–619.

[4] J.C. Rosales and P. A. Garcı́a-Sánchez, Numerical Semigroups, Springer,

2010.

[5] J. C. Rosales and P. A. Garcı́a Sánchez, Numerical semigroups with em-

bedding dimension three, Arch. Math., 83 (2004), 488–496.

[6] E. S. Selmer, On a linear Diophantine problem of Frobenius, J. Reine

Angew. Math., 293/294 (1977), 1–17.

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[7] A. Tripathi, On the Frobenius problem for {a, ha + d, ha + bd, ha +
b2 d, . . . , ha + bk ∗ d}, J. Number Theory, 62 (2016) 212–223.