Intuitively, a graded
monoid is the subset of a graded ring, \bigoplus_{n\in \mathbb N_0}R_n, generated by the R_n's, without using the additive part. That is, the set of elements of the graded monoid is \bigcup_{n\in\mathbb N_0}R_n. Formally, a graded monoid is a monoid (M,\cdot), with a gradation function \phi:M\to\mathbb N_0 such that \phi(m\cdot m')=\phi(m)+\phi(m'). Note that the gradation of 1_M is necessarily 0. Some authors request furthermore that \phi(m)\ne 0 when
m is not the identity. Assuming the gradations of non-identity elements are non-zero, the number of elements of gradation
n is at most g^n where
g is the
cardinality of a
generating set G of the monoid. Therefore, the number of elements of gradation
n or less is at most n+1 (for g=1) or \frac{g^{n+1}-1}{g-1} else. Indeed, each such element is the product of at most
n elements of
G, and only \frac{g^{n+1}-1}{g-1} such products exist. Similarly, the identity element can not be written as the product of two non-identity elements. That is, there is no unit
divisor in such a graded monoid.
Power series indexed by a graded monoid These notions allow us to extend the notion of
power series ring. Instead of the indexing family being \mathbb N, the indexing family could be any graded monoid, assuming that the number of elements of degree
n is finite, for each integer
n. More formally, let (K,+_K,\times_K) be an arbitrary
semiring and (R,\cdot,\phi) a graded monoid. Then K\langle\langle R\rangle\rangle denotes the semiring of power series with coefficients in
K indexed by
R. Its elements are functions from
R to
K. The sum of two elements s,s'\in K\langle\langle R\rangle\rangle is defined pointwise, it is the function sending m\in R to s(m)+_Ks'(m), and the product is the function sending m\in R to the infinite sum \sum_{p,q \in R \atop p \cdot q=m}s(p)\times_K s'(q). This sum is correctly defined (i.e., finite) because, for each
m, there are only a finite number of pairs such that .
Free monoid In
formal language theory, given an
alphabet A, the
free monoid of words over
A can be considered as a graded monoid, where the gradation of a word is its length. == See also ==