Toric fiber products versus Segre products (Q2255354)

The paper under review studies the toric fiber product of homogeneous ideals as well as the (multigraded) Segre product of multigraded rings with respect to a grading by an affine monoid. The main method is a careful investigation of the involved simple generators and Graver generators. It is shown that the quotient ring by a toric fiber product of two ideals is a subring of the Segre product, but in general this inclusion is strict. On the other hand, by carefully choosing the generating vector configuration while keeping the affine monoid, any Segre product can be presented as a toric fiber product without changing the involved quotient rings. Therefore, one can use the results of toric fiber products to study the Segre products. Several nice examples are presented in the end. For instance, the authors show that the quotient ring of a toric fiber product of normal ideals does not need to be normal.