Sets of minimal distances and characterizations of class groups of Krull monoids

Let H be a Krull monoid with finite class group G such that every class contains a prime divisor. Then every non-unit \(a \in H\) can be written as a finite product of atoms, say \(a=u_1 \cdot \ldots \cdot u_k\). The set \(\mathsf L (a)\) of all possible factorization lengths k is called the set of lengths of a. There is a constant \(M \in \mathbb N\) such that all sets of lengths are almost arithmetical multiprogressions with bound M and with difference \(d \in \Delta ^* (H)\), where \(\Delta ^* (H)\) denotes the set of minimal distances of H. We study the structure of \(\Delta ^* (H)\) and establish a characterization when \(\Delta ^*(H)\) is an interval. The system \(\mathcal L (H) = \{ \mathsf L (a) \mid a \in H \}\) of all sets of lengths depends only on the class group G, and a standing conjecture states that conversely the system \(\mathcal L (H)\) is characteristic for the class group. We confirm this conjecture (among others) if the class group is isomorphic to \(C_n^r\) with \(r,n \in \mathbb N\) and \(\Delta ^*(H)\) is not an interval.