Degrees in Auslander–Reiten components with almost split sequences of at most two middle termss

We consider A to be an artin algebra. We study the degrees of irreducible morphisms between modules in Auslander–Reiten components Γ having only almost split sequences with at most two indecomposable middle terms, that is, α(Γ) ≤ 2. We prove that if f : X → Y is an irreducible epimorphism of finite left degree with X or Y indecomposable, then there exists a module Z ∈ Γ and a morphism φ ∈ ℜn(Z, X)\ℜn+1(Z, X) for some positive integer n such that fφ = 0. In particular, for such components if A is a finite dimensional algebra over an algebraically closed field and f = (f1, f2)t : X → Y1 ⊕ Y2 is an irreducible epimorphism of finite left degree then we show that dl(f) = dl(f1) + dl(f2). We also characterize the artin algebras of finite representation type with α(ΓA) ≤ 2 in terms of a finite number of irreducible morphisms with finite degree.