The monomial ideal of independent sets associated to a graph (Q1627504)

Let \(G\) be a simple graph with vertex set \(V(G)\). A subset \(S\) of \(V(G)\) is called an independent subset of \(G\) if there are no edges among the vertices of \(S\). Independent sets play a key role in the study of graphs and important problems arising in graph theory reduce to them. Let \(T=K[s_i, t_i: i\in V(G)]\) be a polynomial ring over a field \(K\). The monomial ideal of independent sets of \(G\) is generated by squarefree monomials of the form \(\prod_{i \in S} s_i\prod_{i\notin S} t_i\), where \(S\) is an independent subset of \(G\). In the paper under review, the author describes the homological and algebraic invariants of this ideal in terms of the combinatorics of \(G\). More precisely, she computes the minimal primary decomposition and characterizes the Cohen-Macaulay ideals. Moreover, the author provides a formula for computing the Betti numbers, which depends only on the coefficients of the independence polynomial of \(G\). Finally, the arithmetical rank of this ideal is determined. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1400.13003].