Invariants of Cohen-Macaulay rings associated to their canonical ideals (Q1682056)

Let \(R\) be a Cohen-Macaulay ring of positive dimension. Assume that \(R\) has a canonical module and that this canonical module is an ideal \(\mathcal C\) of \(R\). The paper under review introduces invariants of \(R\) which are calculated in terms of \(\mathcal C\) but are independent of the choice of \(\mathcal C\). These invariants are used to measure how far \(R\) is from being a Gorenstein ring. The starting point for these invariants is the observation that if \(R\) is a one-dimensional Cohen-Macaulay local ring with a canonical ideal \(\mathcal C\), then the integer \[ e_0(\mathcal C)-\text{length}(R/\mathcal C) \] is independent of the choice of \(\mathcal C\), where \(e_0(\cdot)\) represents Hilbert coefficient. In general, the \(\underline{\text{canonical degree}}\) of \(R\) is defined to be \[ \text{cdeg}(R)=\sum\limits_{\text{height} p=1} [e_0(\mathcal C_p)-\text{length}(R/\mathcal C)_p]\deg(R/p). \] In particular, if \(\mathcal C\) is equimultiple and \((a)\) is a minimal reduction \(\mathcal C\), then \[ \text{cdeg}(R)=\deg (\mathcal C/(a))=e_0(\mathfrak m, \mathcal C/(a)). \] It is shown that if the canonical ideal of \(R\) is equimultiple, then \(r(R)-1\leq \text{cdeg}(R)\), where \(r(R)\) is the type of \(R\); and consequently, \(\text{cdeg}(R)=0\) if and only if \(R\) is Gorenstein. The papers [\textit{V. Barucci} and \textit{R. Fröberg}, J. Algebra 188, No. 2, 418--442 (1997; Zbl 0874.13018)], [\textit{S. Goto} et al., J. Algebra 379, 355--381 (2013; Zbl 1279.13035)], and [\textit{S. Goto} et al., J. Pure Appl. Algebra 219, No. 7, 2666--2712 (2015; Zbl 1319.13017)] have introduced a notion of almost Gorenstein ring. It is shown in the present paper that if the canonical ideal of \(R\) is equimultiple and the canonical degree of \(R\) takes the extremal value \(r(R)-1\), then \(R\) is almost Gorenstein. There are two recent papers that introduce degrees of rings which are similar to the canonical degree; see [\textit{J. Herzog} et al., ``The trace of the canonical module'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1612.02723}] and [\textit{L. Ghezzi} et al., ``The bi-canonical degree of a Cohen-Macaulay ring'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1711.09480}]. In particular, the second paper compares the three degrees.