Depth functions of symbolic powers of homogeneous ideals (Q2334540)

Let\(R\) be a Noetherian polynomial ring over a field \(k\) and \(I\) a homogeneous ideal of \(R\). For an integer \(t\) let \(I^{(t)}\) denote the \(t\)-th symbolic power, that is the intersection of the primary components of \(I^t\) associated with the minimal primes of \(I\). The paper is devoted to an extensive study of \(\operatorname{depth} R/I^{(t)}\) in particular for a monomial ideal \(I\) and its asymptotic behavior for \(t \gg 0\). As one of the main results it is shown that \(\operatorname{depth} R/I^{(t)}\) is almost non-increasing in the sense that \(\operatorname{depth} R/I^{(s)} \geq \operatorname{depth} R/I^{(t)}\) for all \(s \geq 1\) and \(t \in E(s)\), where \(E(S)= \cup_{i \geq 1} \{t \in \mathbb{N}: i(s-1 )+1\leq t \leq is)\}\). The range \(E(s)\) is the best possible because the authors construct examples of squarefree monomial ideals \(I\) such that \(\operatorname{depth} R/I^{(s)} < \operatorname{depth} R/I^{(t)}\) for all \(t \not\in E(s)\). This gives a negative answer to the question (discussed in several papers) whether the function \( \operatorname{depth} R/I^{(t)}\) is always constant for \( t \gg 0\). This is shown to be true if \(I\) is a monomial ideal such that \(I^{(t)}\) is integrally closed for \(t \gg 0\). The main contribution of the paper is to show that for any positive numerical function \(\phi(t)\) which is periodic for \(t \gg 0\) there exist a polynomial ring \(R\) and a homogeneous ideal \(I\) such that \( \operatorname{depth} R/I^{(t)} = \psi(t)\) for all \(t \geq 1\). Among others the authors use the multigrading of monomial ideals and the symbolic fibre ring.