Regular sequences of symmetric polynomials (Q2389062)

Summary: A set of \(n\) homogeneous polynomials in \(n\) variables is a regular sequence if the associated polynomial system has only the obvious solution \((0,0,\dots,0)\). Denote by \(p_k(n)\) the power sum symmetric polynomial in \(n\) variables \(x^k_1+x^k_2+\cdots +x^k_n\). The interpretation of the \(q\)-analogue of the binomial coefficient as Hilbert function leads us to discover that \(n\) consecutive power sums in \(n\) variables form a regular sequence. We consider then the following problem: describe the subsets \(A\subset \mathbb N^*\) of cardinality \(n\) such that the set of polynomials \(p_a(n)\) with \(a\in A\) is a regular sequence. We prove that a necessary condition is that \(n!\) divides the product of the elements of \(A\). To find an easily verifiable sufficient condition turns out to be surprisingly difficult already for \(n=3\). Given positive integers \(a<b<c\) with \(\text{gcd}(a,b,c)=1\), we conjecture that \(p_a(3),p_b(3),p_c(3)\) is a regular sequence if and only if \(abc\equiv 0\pmod 6\). We provide evidence for the conjecture by proving it in several special instances.