Stanley depth and the lcm-lattice (Q2397111)

This paper shows that depth and Stanley depth of a monomial ideal are determined by the lcm-lattice of the ideal. The main result of the paper is the following: {Theorem 4.5:} Let \(S,S'\) be polynomial rings and \(\mathrm{Mon}(S), \mathrm{Mon}(S')\) their sets of monomials. Let \(H\subsetneq G\subset \mathrm{Mon}(S)\) and \(H'\subsetneq G'\subset \mathrm{Mon}(S')\) be four lcm-closed sets of monomials in two (possibly) different polynomial rings, such that \(\langle H\rangle \subsetneq \langle G\rangle\), \(\langle H'\rangle \subsetneq \langle G'\rangle\). Assume further that there exists a surjective join-preserving map \(\delta:\overline{G}\rightarrow \overline{G'}\) with \(\delta^{-1}(\hat{0})=\{\hat{0}\}\) such that \(\delta(H)=H'\). Then \[ \operatorname{spdim}_S\langle G\rangle/\langle H\rangle \geq \operatorname{spdim}_{S'}\langle G'\rangle/\langle H'\rangle \] Several consequences arise from this result, which constitute the contribution of this paper. A main one is that for quotients of monomial ideals Stanley depth and depth behave monotonic with respect to certain maps defined on their lcm-lattices. Another consequence is that two ideals with isomorphic lcm-lattices have the same Stanley projective dimension (this generalizes the main result in [the authors, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 135, 332--347 (2015; Zbl 1330.13038)]). The authors present also a proof for upper bounds on Stanley projective dimension in terms of the number of generators and characterize the extremal case, study generic deformations and the forming of colon ideals. A result of independent interest also presented in this paper is a complete description of the class of all monomial ideals with a given lcm-lattice. The paper finishes with a set of open questions about depth and Stanley depth in terms of finite lattices.