Gröbner bases for staged trees (Q2032060)

The authors define the toric staged ideal of a staged tree \((\mathcal{T},\theta)\). Here \(\mathcal{T}\) is a directed rooted tree and \(\theta\) is a surjective map from the edge set into a finite set of labels, such that for each vertex the labels of the edges coming out of it are distinct and, moreover, for any two vertices the corresponding two sets of labels are either equal or have empty intersection. Assume that all paths from the root of \(\mathcal{T}\) to its leaves have the same length (this is satisfied if \((\mathcal{T},\theta)\) is \textit{stratified}). Consider the polynomial ring whose variables are indexed by such paths, consider another polynomial ring whose variables are indexed by the labeling set and consider the map that sends a path to the product of labels of its edges. This is a graded homomorphism of polynomial rings whose kernel the authors call the \textit{toric staged tree ideal}. In the main result of this work (Theorem 2.14) it is proved that the toric staged tree ideal of a balanced stratified staged tree is generated by a quadratic Gröbner basis with square-free initial ideal. In the final section of the article, the main result is applied to staged tree statistical models.