Atomic semigroup rings and the ascending chain condition on principal ideals

Abstract: An integral domain is called atomic if every nonzero nonunit element factors into irreducibles. On the other hand, an integral domain is said to satisfy the ascending chain condition on principal ideals (ACCP) if every ascending chain of principal ideals terminates. It was asserted by Cohn back in the sixties that every atomic domain satisfies the ACCP, but such an assertion was refuted by Grams in the seventies with an explicit construction of a neat example. Still, atomic domains without the ACCP are notoriously elusive, and just a few classes have been found since Grams' first construction. In the first part of this paper, we generalize Grams' construction to provide new classes of atomic domains without the ACCP. In the second part of this paper, we construct what seems to be the first atomic semigroup ring without the ACCP in the existing literature.