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Graded monomial identities and almost non-degenerate gradings on matrices

Let $F$ be a field of characteristic zero, $G$ be a group and $R$ be the algebra $M_n(F)$ with a $G$-grading. Bahturin and Drensky proved that if $R$ is an elementary and the neutral component is commutative then the graded identities of $R$ follow from three basic types of identities and monomial identities of length $\geq 2$ bounded by a function $f(n)$ of $n$. In this paper we prove the best upper bound is $f(n)=n$, more generally we prove that all the graded monomial identities of an elementary $G$-grading on $M_n(F)$ follow from those of degree at most $n$. We also study gradings which satisfy no monomial identities but the trivial ones, which we call almost non-degenerate gradings. The description of non-degenerate elementary gradings on matrix algebras is reduced to the description of non-degenerate elementary gradings on matrix algebras that have commutative neutral component. We provide necessary conditions so that the grading on $R$ is almost non-degenerate and we apply the results on monomial identities to describe all almost non-degenerate $\mathbb{Z}$-gradings on $M_n(F)$ for $n\leq 5$.