On the growth of the Betti sequence of the canonical module (Q2466808)

The minimal free resolutions of finitely generated modules are always finite over a regular local ring but they are rarely finite over a non-regular ones. An important method to investigate the behavior of minimal free resolutions over singular local rings is analyzing the type of growth of the Betti numbers. Let \((R,\mathfrak m)\) be a Cohen-Macaulay local ring with a dualizing module \(\mathcal{D}\). From the Auslander-Buchsbaum formula it is clear that \(\mathcal{D}\) has a finite minimal free resolution if and only if \(R\) is a Gorenstein ring. Viewing the above matters, an open question due to Craig Huneke arises: Question. If \(R\) is not a Gorenstein ring, then can we say that the Betti sequence of \(\mathcal{D}\) has an exponential growth? In Theorem 1.10 of the first section of the paper under review the authors answer to this question affirmatively for a large class of the above rings. In section 2, the authors as an application of their techniques to study the growth of Betti numbers of \(\mathcal{D}\), give criteria for \(R\) to be Gorenstein. In this direction, a question arises: If the first Betti number of \(\mathcal{D}\) is equal or less than the minimal number of generators of \(\mathcal{D}\), then is \(R\) a Gorenstein ring? In Proposition 2.7 a positive answer to this question which is based on the Hilbert-Burch theorem is given. In this section, there are also noticeable examples for the main results. The final section of the paper is devoted to the notion of extremaility, in the terminology of \textit{L. L. Avramov} [Math. Res. Lett. 3, No. 3, 319--328 (1996; Zbl 0867.13003)]. In this section, the authors by using some results on tensor product of local rings (Proposition 3.2) construct an interesting family of examples to show that the growth of the Betti numbers of \(\mathcal{D}\) is not necessarily extremal.