Generalized cover ideals and the persistence property (Q2443280)

Let \(I\) be an ideal of the polynomial ring \(\mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\), where \(\mathbb{K}\) is an arbitrary field. We denote by \(\text{Ass}(I)\) the set of all primes ideals associated to \(I\). The least integer \(s_0\) such that \(\text{Ass}(I^s)=\text{Ass}(I^{s_0})\) is called the index of stability and is denoted by \(\text{astab}(I)\). In general, the exact computations of the \(\text{astab}(I)\) is a difficult problem and there are not a lot of results on that. Moreover, there is an additional question that arises from the above problem, which is how to classify the ideals that satisfy the persistence property. An ideal \(I\) satisfies the persistence property if \[ \text{Ass}(I^s)\subseteq \text{Ass}(I^{s+1}), \;\text{for all}\;s\geq1. \] From \textit{T. Kaiser} et al. [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 123, No. 1, 239--251 (2014; Zbl 1281.05062)], we know that this is not a property of all square free monomial ideals, but there are a lot of classes of them that have. In this article the authors are describing a family of square free monomial ideals, called partial \(t\)-cover ideals of a graph \(G\), which have the persistence property in the case that the graph \(G\) is a tree, i.e. a graph without cycles. More especially for a fixed integer \(t\geq1\), the partial \(t\)-cover ideal of a graph \(G\) is defined as the monomial ideal \[ J_t(G)=\bigcap_{x\in V(G)}(\bigcap_{\{x_{i_1}, \ldots,x_{i_t}\}\subseteq N(x)}<x,x_{i_1},\ldots,x_{i_t}>), \] where \(N(x)=\{y\;| \;(x,y)\in E(G)\}\) and \(V(G),E(G)\) be the sets of the vertices and edges of the graph correspondingly. The authors in their main theorem are proving for a tree \(G\) and for any fixed integer \(t\geq1\), the partial \(t\)-cover ideal \(J_t(G)\) satisfies the persistence property. Furthermore \[ \text{astab}(J_t(G)))=\begin{cases} 1, &\text{if}\;t=1, \\ \min\{s\;|\;s(t-1)\geq \Delta(G)-1\} > &\text{if}\;t>1,\end{cases} \] where \(\Delta(G)\) is the largest degree of the vertices of the tree \(G\). Key role in their proof plays the form of the minimal generators of the partial \(t\)-cover ideal of the tree \(G\), which they are describing in the article, as also a special class of graphs which is called star graphs.