The leading ideal of a complete intersection of height two (Q2491845)

Let \(S\) be a noetherian local ring with maximal ideal \(N\) and let \(I\) be an ideal in \(S\) generated by a regular sequence of length two. Assume that the associated graded ring \(G=\text{gr}_N(S)\) of \(S\) with respect to \(N\) is a unique factorization domain. In this situation, for the leading form ideal \(I^*\) of \(I\) in \(G\) one has \(\text{height}_GI^*= \text{grade}_GI^*=2\). The authors prove that \(I^*\) is even a perfect ideal of \(G\) if \(I^*\) is 3-generated. So under this assumption, the associated graded ring of \(S/I\) with respect to \(N/I\) (which is isomorphic with \(G/I^*)\) is a Cohen-Macaulay ring if \(G\) has this property. As an application the authors deduce that if \(R\) is a one-dimensional Gorenstein local ring of embedding dimension 3 such that the maximal ideal \(M\) of \(R\) has reduction number at most 4, then \(\text{gr}_MR\) is Cohen-Macaulay.