Rees algebras and Koszul homology (Q1116986)

The paper discusses several notions concerning ideals in regular local rings, in particular ``sliding depth'' (SD) and ``strongly Cohen-Macaulay'' (SCM). The first part reviews these notions and some results about them. The main result of the second part is the following theorem: If \(I\) is a Cohen-Macaulay ideal generated by a \(d\)-sequence and satisfies (SD), then the divisor class group of the Rees ring \(R(I)\) is a finitely generated free abelian group, provided \(R(I)\) is normal. (Note that this theorem is a very special case of the theorem of \textit{A. Simis} and \textit{Ngo Viet Trung} [Math. Z. 198, No. 4, 479--491 (1988; Zbl 0626.13003)].) The theorem is illustrated by some examples. Next, the author considers the canonical module of \(R(I)\), and gives an explicit formula under hypotheses too special to be reported here. In the last part it is shown that Cohen-Macaulay ideals of codimension 3 cannot be (SCM) if they have a pure resolution satisfying certain numerical constraints. The proof is based on a difficult computation involving Hilbert functions (and has been carried out with the help of a computer algebra system). This result leads the author to conjecture that non-Gorenstein ideals of codimension 3 and deviation at least 3, which are generically complete intersections, cannot be (SCM). The paper concludes by some more examples supporting the conjecture.