Koszul blowup algebras associated to three-dimensional Ferrers diagrams (Q1783398)

The topic of this paper is the Rees algebra and toric ring of certain squarefree monomial ideals. Some highly-studied properties of Rees algebras are whether these are Cohen-Macaulay, normal, and/or Koszul. These properties are satisfied for Rees and toric algebras of many monomial ideals of interest -- ideals of Veronese type [\textit{B. Sturmfels}, Gröbner bases and convex polytopes. Providece, RI: AMS, American Mathematical Society (1996; Zbl 0856.13020)], principal strongly stable ideals and lex segment ideals [\textit{E. De Negri}, Math. Nachr. 203, 31--45 (1999; Zbl 0954.13012)], certain polymatroidal ideals [\textit{J. Schweig}, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 215, No. 11, 2660--2665 (2011; Zbl 1230.13028)], etc. The literature on this topic is quite vast. This paper follows up on the two papers [\textit{A. Corso} and \textit{U. Nagel}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 361, No. 3, 1371--1395 (2009; Zbl 1228.05068); \textit{A. Corso} et al., Forum Math. 29, No. 4, 799--830 (2017; Zbl 1373.13010)], which investigate many properties (including the aforementioned Cohen-Macaulay, normal, and Koszul properties) for monomial ideals associated to two-dimensional Ferrers diagrams. These are the well-known diagrams ubiquitous in representation theory and combinatorics associated to partitions of integers. Let \(\mathbb{N}=\{1,2,\ldots\}\). Explicitly, a finite subset \(\mathcal{D}\subset \mathbb{N}^2\) is a Ferrer's diagram if, for any \((i,j)\in\mathcal{D}\), \((s,t)\in\mathcal{D}\) for all \(1\le s\le i,1\le t\le j\). To a two-dimensional Ferrer's diagram one associates the monomial ideal \(I_{\mathcal{D}}\) generated by all monomials of the form \(x_iy_j\) for \((i,j)\in\mathcal{D}\). Part of the content of the above papers is that such ideals have Rees algebras which are Koszul, Cohen-Macaulay, and normal. These definitions can be generalized to three dimensions in a natural way: \(\mathcal{D}\subset \mathbb{N}^3\) is a Ferrer's diagram if, for any \((i,j,k)\in\mathcal{D}\), \((s,t,u)\in\mathcal{D}\) for all \(1\le s\le i,1\le t\le j,1\le u\le k\) and the ideal \(I_{\mathcal{D}}\) is associated to \(\mathcal{D}\) in exactly the same way. In this paper the authors establish that the squarefree monomial ideals attached to certain three-dimensional Ferrer's diagrams are Koszul, Cohen-Macaulay, and normal. Unlike the two-dimensional case, not every three-dimensional Ferrer's diagram \(\mathcal{D}\) yields monomial ideal \(I_{\mathcal{D}}\) satisfying these three properties (the authors point this out in Example 2.4). The authors introduce the projection property (Definition 2.5) for three-dimensional Ferrers diagrams and prove that if a Ferrer's diagram \(\mathcal{D}\) satisfies this property, then \(I_{\mathcal{D}}\) is Koszul, Cohen-Macaulay, and normal.