Atomicity in Certain Pullbacks

We consider certain pullback constructions in the spirit of Int(E;D). It is well-known that if E is a nite subset of D, then Int(E;D) is non-atomic. Since Int(E;D) may be de ned by means of a conductor square, it is natural to ask if this non-atomicity property exists in a more general setting. The authors show that although non-atomicity is usually to be expected in the more general case, certain restrictive conditions do necessitate atomicity. As a consequence of the main result, we have an atomic domain that does not satisfy the ascending chain condition on principal ideals.