The depth of powers of an ideal (Q2572079)

Let \(S\) be either a noetherian local ring with maximal ideal \(\mathfrak{m}\) or a standard graded \(K\)-algebra, where \(K\) is any field, with graded maximal ideal \(\mathfrak{m}\), of dimension \(d\). Let \(I\) be a proper ideal of \(S\) (graded in the second case). This interesting paper is concerned with the behaviour of \(\text{depth} S/I^k\). It is well known that \(\text{depth} S/I^k\leq d-\ell(I)\), where \(\ell (I)\) is the analytic spread of \(I\), and is constant for \(k\gg 0\) [cf. \textit{L. Burch}, Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 72, 369--373 (1972; Zbl 0242.13018) and \textit{M. Brodmann}, Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 86, 35--39 (1979; Zbl 0413.13011)]; the authors call this value constant the limit depth of \(I\) and denote it by \(\lim_{k\rightarrow \infty}\text{depth} S/I^k\). In section 1 these facts are obtained in a new and relatively short way. The second section deals with the initial behaviour of \(\text{depth} S/I^k\). The authors obtain the following result for the polynomial ring \(S\) in \(n\) variables over \(K\) (proposition 2.1): if \(I\) is a graded ideal all of whose powers have a linear resolution, then \(\text{depth} S/I^k\) is a nonincreasing function of \(k\). Moreover, it is shown that all powers of a monomial ideal \(I\) have linear quotients if \(I\) satisfies the \(x\)-condition which is a condition on the Gröbner basis of the toric ideal of the Rees algebra of \(I\). In this case some lower bounds are given for the \(\text{depth} S/I^k\) (corollary 2.6). In section 3 \(\text{depth} S/I^k\) is computed for three classes of monomial ideals: polymatroidal ideals, edge ideals of finite graphs, and monomial ideals of finite lattices. In section 4 it is proved that, given any bounded nondecreasing numerical function \(f\) over the positive natural numbers, there exists a monomial ideal \(I\) such that \(\text{depth} S/I^k=f(k) \) for all \(k\) (theorem 4.1). The authors conclude the paper with an example of a monomial ideal whose depth function is not monotonic. In view of such examples, the authors conjecture that the function \(\text{depth} S/I^k\) can be any convergent numerical nonnegative function.