Regularity of symbolic powers of edge ideals (Q2301468)

Let \(G\) be a graph and let \(\nu(G)\) denote the induced matching number of \(G\). The edge ideal of \(G\) is the squarefree monomial ideal \(I(G)\) which is generated by quadratic monomials corresponding to edges of \(G\). In the paper under review, the authors study the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of symbolic powers of \(I(G)\). Indeed, it was conjectured by Minh that for every graph \(G\), the equality \(\mathrm{reg}(I(G)^s)=\mathrm{reg}(I(G)^{(s)})\) holds, where \(I(G)^{(s)}\) is the \(s\)th symbolic power of \(I(G)\). The authors prove Minh's conjecture for two classes of graphs. Before stating their main results, we recall that if \(G_1\) and \(G_2\) are two graphs such that \(G_1\cap G_2=K_r\) is a complete graph with \(G_1\neq K_r\) and \(G_2\neq K_r\), then \(G_1\cup G_2\) is called the clique sum of \(G_1\) and \(G_2\). As the first main result, it is proven that if \(G\) is obtained by taking a clique sum of a cycle \(C_{2n+1}\) and some bipartite graphs which has an induced subgraph \(H\) on vertices \(V(G)\setminus \bigcup_{x\in V(C_{2n+1})}N_G(x)\) such that none of the vertices of \(H\) is part of a cycle in \(G\), then \(\mathrm{reg}(I(G)^s)=\mathrm{reg}(I(G)^{(s)})\), provided that \(\nu(G)-\nu(H)\geq 3\). The second main result states that if \(G'\) is a clique sum of \(r\) cycles of size \(2n+1\), say \(C_1, \ldots, C_r\), and \(G\) is the clique sum of \(G'\) and some bipartite graphs, such that \(N_G(C_i)=V(G)\) for any odd cycle \(C_i\) in \(G\), then \(\mathrm{reg}(I(G)^s)=\mathrm{reg}(I(G)^{(s)})\), for any integer \(s\geq 1\).