Divisibility Properties of the Semiring of Ideals of an Integral Domain

Let D be an integral domain, F+(D) (resp., f+(D)) be the set of nonzero (resp., nonzero finitely generated) ideals of D, R1 = f+(D) ∪ {(0)}, and R2 = F+(D) ∪ {(0)}. Then (Ri, ⊕, ⊗) for i = 1, 2 is a commutative semiring with identity under I ⊕ J = I + J and I ⊗ J = IJ for all I, J ∈ Ri. In this paper, among other things, we show that D is a Prüfer domain if and only if every ideal of R1 is a k-ideal if and only if R1 is Gaussian. We also show that D is a Dedekind domain if and only if R2 is a unique factorization semidomain if and only if R2 is a principal ideal semidomain. These results are proved in a more general setting of star operations on D.