Stability of associated primes of integral closures of monomial ideals (Q1003620)

Let \(I\) be a monomial ideal of a polynomial ring \(R=K[X_{1},\ldots ,X_r]\) over a field \(K\) and \(d(I)\) the maximal degree of minimal generators of \(I\). The notation \(\overline {I^n}\) stands for the integral closure of \(I^n\). This is well known that the sequence \(\{\text{Ass}(R/\overline {I^n})\}\) is increasing. This result is in Proposition 16.3 of \textit{M. Herrmann, S. Ikeda} and \textit{U. Orbanz} [Equimultiplicity and blowing up. Berlin: Springer-Verlag (1988; Zbl 0649.13011)]. The main result of this paper says that \[ \text{Ass}(R/\overline {I^n}) = \text{Ass}(R/\overline {I^{n_0}}) \;\;(\star) \] for all \(n\geqslant n_{0}:=r2^{r-1}[d(I)]^{r-2}\) if \(r\geq3\) and \(n_{0}:=1\) if \(r\leq2\). For a monomial \(X^{\alpha}:=X_1^{\alpha_1} \cdots X_r^{\alpha_r}\) set \(X^{\alpha}[i]:=X_1^{\alpha_1} \cdots X_{i-1}^{\alpha_{i-1}}X_{i+1}^{\alpha_{i+1}} \cdots X_r^{\alpha_r}\) and consider \(I[i]:=(X^{\alpha}[i]:X^{\alpha}\in I)\). The main tools to prove \((\star)\) are some results on the geometry of polyhedra, the theory of Gram determinant of linear algebra and an induction on \(r\). The induction argument is based on the equality \[ \text{Ass}(R/\overline {I^n})\setminus {(X_{1},\ldots ,X_r)} =\bigcup_{i=1}^{r}\text{Ass}(R/\overline {I[i]^n}). \] The next aim of the paper is to show that the number \(n_0\) in \((\star)\) is sharp.