Ideals generated by quadratic polynomials (Q2391598)

\textit{L.~Burch} [Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 64, 949--952 (1968; Zbl 0172.32301)] (in the local case) and \textit{P.~Kohn} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 35, 55--58 (1972; Zbl 0218.13017)] (in the global case) showed that there exist three-generated ideals of arbitrarily large projective dimension. However, in these constructions, in order to attain large projective dimension, one needs to consider forms of large degree; see (B. Engheta, Thesis, University of Kansas, 2005). In this context, M.~Stillman asked whether, given any sequence \(d_1, \ldots, d_s\) of natural numbers, there is a bound that depends only on the sequence \(d_1, \ldots, d_s\) for the projective dimension of a homogeneous ideal generated by forms of degrees \(d_1, \ldots, d_s\) in a polynomial ring over a field. (The desired bound should not depend on the dimension of the polynomial ring.) In the paper under review, the authors give a positive answer to Stillman's question, for the case with \(d_1 = \cdots = d_s = 2\). More specifically, they show that 1) There exists a function \(C : \mathbb{Z} \to \mathbb{Z}\) such that if \(F_1, \ldots, F_s\) are polynomials of degree at most two in a polynomial ring \(R\) over an infinite field \(k\), then there exists a \(k\)-subalgebra of \(R\) generatedy by a regular sequence of at most \(C(2s)\) forms that contain \(F_1, \ldots, F_s\); in particular the projective dimension of \(R/I\) is at most \(C(2s)\), 2) The function \(C\) grows asymptotically as \(s \mapsto 2s^{2s}\).