Two-summand criterion for Laurent series over semidomains

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Let SS be an additively reduced and additively atomic semidomain, and let cmathcalA+(S)cmathcal{A}_{+}(S) denote the set of additive atoms of SS and S×S^{\times} its multiplicative unit group. For a Laurent series ff, write supp⁡(f)\operatorname{supp}(f) for its support. Two-summand criterion. The following statements are equivalent:

  1. A+(S)=S×\mathcal{A}_{+}(S)=S^{\times}.
  2. Every f∈S⟦x±1⟧f\in S\llbracket x^{\pm1}\rrbracket with ∣supp⁡(f)∣>1|\operatorname{supp}(f)|>1 can be expressed as the sum of at most two multiplicative irreducibles.
  3. There exists k∈Nk\in\mathbb{N} such that every f∈S⟦x±1⟧f\in S\llbracket x^{\pm1}\rrbracket with ∣supp⁡(f)∣>1|\operatorname{supp}(f)|>1 can be expressed as the sum of at most kk multiplicative irreducibles.

This proposed refinement characterizes exactly when a uniform finite bound on the number of multiplicative irreducible summands improves to the bound two. The source presents it as a conjectural refinement motivated by the established upper bound of three summands; no resolution is supplied.

References

Primary source

Nathan Kaplan and Harold Polo, “A Goldbach theorem for Laurent series semidomains”, arXiv:2312.14888 (2025).

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