Conditional independence ideals with hidden variables (Q2307439)

A class of determinantal ideals is studied. The motivation comes from algebraic statistics; the generators of the ideal express conditional statements on the joint distribution matrix of three observed finite support random variables, arising from two hidden variables. The ideal can also be seen as the determinantal hyperedge ideal of a hypergraph defined from the state spaces of the observed variables. The main result of this work is an explicit description of the set of minimal primes of the ideal.