Uniform behaviour of the Frobenius closures of ideals generated by regular sequences (Q2576983)

The Frobenius powers of an ideal \(I\) in a commutative noetherian ring over a field of positive characteristic \(p\) are defined to be \(I^{[p^e]}=\{f^{p^e}: f \in I \}\). The Frobenius closure of \(I\) is \(I^F=\{f: f^{p^e}\in I^{[p^e]}\) for some \(e \}\). Since \(I^F\) is finitely generated there exists a number \(e_0\) (a Frobenius bound) such that \(f \in I^F\) implies that already \(f^{p^{e_0}} \in I^{[p^{e_0}]}\). However, there does not exist an a priori bound for \(e_0\) and the computation of the Frobenius closure is difficult. The paper under review deals with the question whether there exists a uniform bound for the family of ideals \(I^{[p^{e}]}\), \(e \in {\mathbb N}\), and gives a positive answer for the case that \(I \) is generated by a regular sequence in a local Cohen-Macaulay ring \(R\). To obtain this result the authors consider the top-dimensional local cohomology \(H^d_m(R)\) together with the natural action of the Frobenius on it. This module is an artinian \(R\)-module, and its \(F\)-torsion submodule has by a theorem of Hartshorne-Speiser-Lyubeznik [\textit{R. Hartshorne} and \textit{R. Speiser}, Ann. Math. (2) 105, 45--79 (1977; Zbl 0362.14002); \textit{G. Lyubeznik}, J. Reine Angew. Math, 491, 65--130 (1997; Zbl 0904.13003)] the property that there exists \(b\) such that \(F^b\) annihilates this torsion submodule. This so-called Hartshorne-Speiser-Lyubeznik number yields then a bound for the given family of ideals. The authors raise also the question whether there exists a Frobenius bound which holds for all ideals in a given ring. This was disproved by the reviewer [Compos. Math. 142, 451--463 (2006; Zbl 1105.13006)].