Direct-product rigidity and factor reconstruction for monoids with zero

Abstract

We study direct products of monoids with zero and give a criterion under which their factors can be recovered from the multiplicative structure alone. While classical decomposition theory encodes direct products through factor congruences, central elements, and refinement properties, we give a concrete multiplicative reconstruction mechanism. If the factors have no nontrivial complemented central idempotents, then the coordinate idempotents are precisely the atoms and coatoms of the complemented-central-idempotent poset, and their multiplicative stabilizers are precisely the coordinate factors and cofactors. It follows that every isomorphism between such products is monomial, yielding the corresponding wreath-product description of automorphism groups. More generally, every product decomposition is obtained by grouping the original factors; in particular, strict refinement follows. We apply these results to multiplicative monoids of directly indecomposable unital rings, including connected commutative rings, and to arithmetic examples arising from residue-class rings.