Hilbert basis of the Lipman semigroup (Q616742)

Let \((Y,0)\) be a germ of a complex normal surface singularity, \((X,E) \to (Y,0)\) a minimal resolution, \(E_1, \ldots,E_n\) the irreducible components of the (necessarily connected) exceptional divisor \(E\). Then \[ {\mathcal E} = \{ D=m_1E_1 + \cdots + m_n E_n : m_i \in \mathbb{Z} , \, D.E_i \leq 0 , \, i=1, \ldots, n \} \] is an additive semigroup, called the \textit{Lipman semigroup} of the singularity. It has a number of interesting properties, in particular it has a unique minimal generating set \({\mathcal H}_{\mathcal E} \), called the Hilbert basis of the semigroup. The toric variety associated to \(\mathcal E \) is \(V_{\mathcal E}:={\text{Spec}}\, ({\mathbb{C}}[\mathcal E]\)). Both the semigroup \(\mathcal E\) and the variety \(V_{\mathcal E}\) are important invariants of the singularity. A natural question, addressed before by several authors, is to give an algorithm to construct the Hilbert basis \({\mathcal H}_{\mathcal E}\). In this paper the author works indirectly, by introducing an auxiliary semigroup \(\mathcal S = {\mathcal S}_{\mathcal E}\), which has a Hilbert basis \({\mathcal H}_{\mathcal S}\) that can be computed. It is proved that this basis immediately gives a Hilbert basis of \(\mathcal E\) and a parametrization of the toric variety \(V_{\mathcal E}\). The semigroup \(\mathcal S\) is defined as follows. Let \(M=M(\mathcal E)\) be the intersection matrix, i.e., its entry \(M_{ij}\) is the integer \(E_i.E_j\) and \(A=[A|I_n]\) (an \(n \times 2n\) matrix). Then, \[ \mathcal S= \{(v_1, \ldots, v_n)\in {\mathbb{N}}^{2n}:A[v_1, \ldots,v_n]^T =0 \}\, . \] For semigroups of this kind (kernels of integral matrices) there are efficient combinatorial algorithms to find a Hilbert basis, e.g., see Chapter 6 of [\textit{M. Kreuzer, L. Robbiano}, Computational commutative algebra. II. Berlin: Springer. ( 2005; Zbl 1090.13021)]. The paper concludes with an example involving a singularity of type \(A_2\).