Further applications of clutter domination parameters to projective dimension (Q2345543)

In the paper under review, the authors study the relationship between the projective dimension of a squarefree monomial ideal and the domination parameters of the associated graph or clutter. The first half of the paper deals with graphs that have perfect dominating sets. It is shown that, in this case, the projective dimension of the associated ideal \(I(G)\) is exactly the size of the complement of any perfect dominating set of \(G\). This provides a class of graphs whose ideals' projective dimensions can be recovered immediately via combinatorial properties of the associated graphs. In the remainder of the paper, the authors generalize a domination parameter for graphs studied in [\textit{H. Dao} and \textit{J. Schweig}, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 120, No. 2, 453--469 (2013; Zbl 1257.05114)] to clutters, as follows: let \(\mathcal{C}\) be a clutter. For a set \(A\subseteq V(\mathcal{C})\), let \(\gamma_0(A, \mathcal{C})\) denote the least cardinality of a set \(X\subseteq V(C)\setminus A\) such that every \(a\in A\) is in an edge of \(\mathcal{C}\) with some \(x\in X\). Then \(X\) is said to be a dominating set of \(A\) in \(\mathcal{C}\). Set \[ \tau (\mathcal{C}) = \max\{\gamma_0(A, \mathcal{C}) : A\subseteq V(\mathcal{C}) \text{\;is \;independent \;and \;has \;no \;isolated \;vertices}\}. \] It is proved that for any clutter \(\mathcal{C}\), the inequality \(\text{pd}(\mathcal{C})\leq |V(\mathcal{C})|-\tau(\mathcal{C})\) holds true. Through Hochster's Formula, the authors use their bounds on projective dimension to provide bounds on the homologies of the associated Stanley-Reisner complexes.