Arithmetic properties encoded in undermonoids

Abstract: Let $M$ be a cancellative and commutative monoid. A submonoid $N$ of $M$ is called an undermonoid if the Grothendieck groups of $M$ and $N$ coincide. For a given property $\mathfrak{p}$, we are interested in providing an answer to the following main question: does it suffice to check that all undermonoids of $M$ satisfy $\mathfrak{p}$ to conclude that all submonoids of $M$ satisfy $\mathfrak{p}$? In this paper, we give a positive answer to this question for the property of being atomic, and then we prove that if $M$ is hereditarily atomic (i.e., every submonoid of $M$ is atomic), then $M$ must satisfy the ACCP, proving a recent conjecture posed by Vulakh and the first author. We also give positive answers to our main question for the following well-studied factorization properties: the bounded factorization property, half-factoriality, and length-factoriality. Finally, we determine all the monoids whose submonoids/undermonoids are half-factorial (or length-factorial).