On the periodicity of irreducible elements in arithmetical congruence monoids

Arithmetical congruence monoids, which arise in non-unique factorization theory, are multiplicative monoids $M_{a,b}$ consisting of all positive integers $n$ satsfying $n \equiv a \bmod b$. In this paper, we examine the asymptotic behavior of the set of irreducible elements of $M_{a,b}$, and characterize in terms of $a$ and $b$ when this set forms an eventually periodic sequence.