The symbolic defect of an ideal (Q1730895)

Let \(\mathbb{K}\) be an algebraically closed field. Let \(I\) be a homogeneous ideal of \(R=\mathbb{K}[x_0,\ldots,x_n]\). The m-th symbolic power of \(I\) is defined to be \[I^{(m)}=\bigcap_{P\in\mathrm{Ass}(I)}(I^mR_P\cap R),\] where \(\mathrm{Ass}(I)\) denotes the set of associated primes of \(I\) and \(R_P\) is the ring \(R\) localized at the prime ideal \(P\). During the last decade, there has been interest in the so-called ``ideal containment problem'', that is for a fixed integer \(m\), find the smallest integer \(r\) such that \(I^{(r)}\subseteq I^m.\) In this note, the authors introduce a new way to measure the discrepancy between symbolic and ordinary powers of homogeneous ideals. The m-th symbolic defect of \(I\) is \[ \mathrm{sdefect}(I/m):=\mu (I^{(m)}/I^m), \] where \(\mu(M)\) denotes the number of minimal generators of the \(R\)-module \(M\). The main result of this note is a classification of general sets of points in \(\mathbb{P}^2\) whose defining ideals \(I\) satisfy \(\mathrm{sdefect}(I,2)=1\). This holds only for sets of \(3, 5, 7\) or \(8\) general points. Moreover the authors show that if \(X\) is a set of \(\binom{\alpha+1}{2}\) points of \(\mathbb{P}^2\) with the gereric Hilbert function and \(\mathrm{sdefect}(I,2)=1\) then \(X\) is a linear star configuration (i.e. \(X\) is the set of intersection points of \((\alpha +1)\) general lines in \(\mathbb{P}^2\)). Finally they give a somewhat unexpected example showing that the symbolic defect sequence \((\mathrm{sdefect}(I,m))_{m\geq 1}\) fails to be weakly growing. The reviewer is sure that the symbolic defect will attract attention of algebraists and geometers and we will see a number of significant contributions on the subject in the next future.