Combinatorial secant varieties (Q851496)

This paper connects combinatorial problems to questions about ideals in polynomial rings, as can be found in the recent book ``Combinatorial commutative algebra'' of \textit{E. Miller} and the first author [GTM 227, Springer (2005; Zbl 1090.13001)]. Associating to any graph \(G\) its edge ideal \(E(G)\), several data and properties of \(G\) can be deduced from the secant ideals of \(E(G)\). If one could find an algebraic proof of theorem 3.12 of the paper under review, one would get another proof for the ``Strong Perfect Graph Theorem'', recently obtained by \textit{M. Chudnovsky, N. Robertson, P. Seymour} and \textit{R. Thomas} [Ann. Math. (2) 164, No. 1, 51--229 (2006; Zbl 1112.05042)]. The authors further investigate whether the initial ideal of the \(r\)-th secant ideal of a projective variety coincides with the \(r\)-th secant ideal of the initial ideal. If this happens to be so, the corresponding term order is called delightful, and this concept is brought into touch with delightful triangulations of convex polytopes.