Monomial ideals and their decompositions (Q1668473)

This text book is aimed toward advanced undergraduate students and graduate students who have taken a basic course in abstract algebra which includes polynomial rings and ideals. Its goal is to introduce them to decomposition of ideals in the polynomial ring \(R[x_1,\ldots,x_d]\) with coefficients in a commutative ring \(R\). It focuses especially on monomial ideals (ideals that are generated by monomials of the form \(\mathbf{x}^u=x_1^{u_1}\cdots x_d^{u_d}\), in which \({\mathbf{u}}=(u_1,\ldots,u_d)\in \mathbb{Z}^d \)). The significance of monomial ideals in general, and of their decompositions, is that they are connected with incredible ways to other areas of mathematics, such as algebraic combinatorics, geometry, graph theory, and topology. The present book is thought as a gentle introduction to monomial ideals and is divided into four parts: Part I speaks generally for the monomial ideals. More epsecially, Chapter 1 presents the fundamental properties of monomial ideals in the polynomial ring \(R[x_1,\ldots,x_d]\). A subset \(I\subset R[x_1,\ldots,x_d]\) is a monomial ideal in the polynomial ring and is defined as an ideal that can be generated by monomials on the variables \(x_1,\ldots,x_d\). The present chapter analyzes the above notion. Moreover, the chapter presents the notion of integral domains, the set of the generators of a monomial ideal and the notion of noetherian rings. Chapter 2 focuses on operations on monomial ideals. Especially, it presents the intersections of monomial ideals, in which the monomial ideals are decomposed. Generating sequences for intersection of monomial ideals are described using at least common multiples. In this chapter, unique factorization domains and the monomial radical are also introduced. The chapter closes with the presentation of some other constructions, such as bracket powers of monomial ideals. Chapter 3 studies the \(m\)-irreducible ideals which are the simplest monomial ideals. The chapter contains also some material about actual computations of the \(m\)-irreducible decompositions. Their utility is due to the fact that every monomial ideal has an \(m\)-irreducible decomposition, as it's proved with the present chapter. Part II is dedicated to show some connections between monomial ideals and other areas of research. More especially, Chapter 4 describes some of the interactions between monomial ideals, graph theory and combinatorics. Firstly, it focuses on three special cases of monomial ideals\(;\) the edge ideal of a simple graph, the Stanley-Reisner ideal and the facet ideals of a simplicial complex, which are ``square free'' monomial ideals. Secondly, graphs and edge ideals are presented as well as the decompositions of edge ideals. Then, the simplicial complexes and their Stanley-Reisner ideals are introduced as well as their decompositions. The chapter ends with the presentation of the facet ideals and their decompositions and of a process that forms monomial generating sequences to \(m\)-irreducible decompositions, and vice versa, called ``Alexander duality''. Chapter 5 describes some of the interactions between the notions presented in the previous chapters and some of the other areas of mathematics and engineering. Firstly, the Krull dimension is presented, as a measure of the size of a ring. Secondly, vertex covers and ``phasor measurement unit'' (PMU) problem is discussed. The next section presents, the Stanley's famous solution of the Upper Bound Conjecture. The chapter closes tith the presentation of Hilbert functions and initial ideals and with the resolutions of monomial ideals. Part III, presents techniques for actually computing \(m\)-irreducible decompositions. These techniques are divided in two categories: these used for computing decompositions of general classes of monomial ideals and those used for taking decompositions of two or more input ideals and combining them to construct a decomposition of an ideal built out of the input ideals. Chapter 6, focuses on parametric decompositions of monomial ideals and on techniques for computing them. Among the presented techniques are: the corner elements, the finding corner elements in two variables, the finding corner elements in general, the decompositions of some powers of ideals and a new one technique, which is a current area of research, called ``Macaulay inverse systems''. Parameter ideals are another case of monomial ideals with a reasonable algorithm for computing \(m\)-irreducible decompositions, which are also studied. The last chapter, Chapter 7, discusses two aspects of the problem of computing \(m\)-irreducible decompositions, by presenting two algorithms for computing these \(m\)-irreducible decompositions. Especially, it focuses on \(m\)-irreducible decompositions of monomial radicals, of bracket powers of an ideal, of sum of the ideals, of colon ideals, of the saturation of the ideals, of the generalized bracket powers of an ideal and of the product of ideals. Finally, the textbook contains two appendices. The first one introduces important algebraic notions: rings, ideals and related constructions for review. The second one introduces the computer algebra system ``Macaulay2'', which is a very useful tool for studying rings and ideals. All the chapters contain exercises and Macaulay 2 material for the computational exploration of the presented notions.