Projective toric varieties of codimension 2 with maximal Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity (Q2161126)

The main result of this article is a classification of projective toric varieties of codimension \(2\), \(X\), with Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity equal to \(\deg X -1\). The motivation to study this question comes from the conjecture of \textit{D. Eisenbud} and \textit{S. Goto} [J. Algebra 88, 89--133 (1984; Zbl 0531.13015)] stating that over an algebraically closed field \[ \operatorname{reg} X \leq \deg X - \operatorname{codim} X +1, \] for any nondegenerate, irreducible projective subscheme \(X\subset \mathbb{P}^n\). Proven not to hold in [\textit{J. McCullough} and \textit{I. Peeva}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 31, No. 2, 473--496 (2018; Zbl 1390.13043)], the Eisenbud-Goto inequality is known to hold for all projective toric varieties of codimension \(2\) -- \textit{cf}.~[\textit{I. Peeva} and \textit{B. Sturmfels}, Math. Z. 229, No. 1, 163--194 (1998; Zbl 0918.13006)]. The approach used in this article is set in the general theory of toric ideals. In the main result (Theorem 1.3) the classification is obtained in terms of the Gale diagram of the associated lattice ideal. As a consequence of this result, it follows that all codimension \(2\) smooth toric varieties whose regularity attains the upper bound \(\deg X -1\) fall within three classes of subvarieties of projective spaces of dimension \(\leq 5\), namely monomial curves in \(\mathbb{P}^3\), the Segre embedding of \(\mathbb{P}^2\times \mathbb{P}^1\) and its hyperplane sections (Theorem 1.5).