A General Theory of Almost Splitting Sets

Let * be a star-operation of finite type on an integral domain D. In this paper, we generalize and study the concept of almost splitting sets. We define a saturated multiplicative subset S of D to be an almost g*-splitting set of D if for each 0 ≠ d ∈ D, there exists an integer n = n(d) ≥1 such that d ⁿ  = st for some s ∈ S and t ∈ D with (t, s′)_* = D for all s′ ∈ S. Among other things, we prove that every saturated multiplicative subset of D is an almost g*-splitting set if and only if D is an almost weakly factorial domain (AWFD) with *-dim (D) = 1. We also give an example of an almost g*-splitting set which is not a g*-splitting set.