F-rationality of determinantal rings and their Rees rings (Q1590908)

Let \(X\) be an \(m \times n\) matrix of indeterminates over a field \(K\), and let \(I_t(X)\) be the ideal in the polynomial ring in these indeterminates over \(K\) generated by the \(t \times t\) minors of \(X\). This is a determinantal ideal. Determinantal ideals arise naturally in many contexts, perhaps most notably they determine the fixed-size matrices of a bounded rank. Determinantal ideals have many good properties: A quotient by a determinantal ideal is a Cohen-Macaulay normal integral domain (Macaulay, Eagon, Northcott, Hochster, Laksov, Musili). More recently, with the coming of the tight closure theory, these determinantal rings have been proved to be F-regular (Hochster-Huneke, Conca-Herzog, Glassbrenner-Smith). In the paper under review Bruns and Conca consider other tight closure properties of various determinantal structures. They prove that the symbolic Rees algebra of the determinantal ideal \(I_t(X)\) is F-rational (thus normal and Cohen-Macaulay). If the characteristic of \(K\) is strictly bigger than \(\min\{t, m-t, n-t\}\), then the same holds for the (ordinary) Rees algebra. Also, if \(\operatorname {char} K > \min\{t, m-t, n-t\}\), then the associated graded ring of \(I_t(X)\) is Cohen-Macaulay and the subalgebra of \(K[X]\) generated by the \(t \times t\) minors is F-rational (and thus normal Cohen-Macaulay).