On Gorenstein graphs (Q2240742)

Let \(k\) be a field and \(R: =k[X_1,\dots, X_n]\) be the polynomial ring over \(k\) in the indeterminates \(X_1,\dots, X_n\). The edge ideal of a graph \(G\), with the vertex set \(V=\{1,\dots, n\}\) and the edge set \(E\), is the square-free monomial ideal \[I(G):=\langle X_i X_j\mid \{i,j\}\in E \rangle_R.\] By definition \(G\) is called Gorenstein over \(k\) if so is the ring \(R/I(G)\). This paper studies Gorenstein graphs. A graph \(G\) is called claw-free if it does not contain the complete bipartite graph \(K_{1,3}\) as an induced subgraph. The first main result of this paper asserts that a claw-free graph \(G\) is Gorenstein if and only if every connected component of \(G\) is one of \(K_1\), \(K_2\) and \(C^c_n\) with \(n\geq 5\). (Here, \(K_n\) is the complete graph of order \(n\) and \(C^c_n\) is the complement of the cycle of length \(n\) in \(K_n\).) The paper also presents a method for constructing Gorenstein graphs from a given one. For a graph \(G\), let \(\alpha(G)\) denote the cardinality of the largest independent set in \(G\). Let \(x\) be a non-isolated vertex of a Gorenstein graph \(G\). Let \(H\) be the graph constructed from \(G\) by adding three new vertices \(a\), \(b\) and \(c\) and the following new edges: Join \(a\) to \(b\) and every neighbor of \(x\), join \(b\) to \(c\), and join \(c\) to \(x\). The author shows that \(H\) is a Gorenstein graph with \(\alpha(H)=\alpha(G)+1\).