How to compute the Stanley depth of a monomial ideal (Q2654059)

Let \(K\) be a field, \(S = K[x_1,\ldots, x_n]\) be the polynomial ring in \(n\) variables, and \(M\) be a finitely generated \({\mathbb Z}^n\)-graded \(S\)-module. Then a Stanley decomposition \({\mathcal D}\) of \(M\) is a presentation of \(M\) as a finite direct sum \[ {\mathcal D}:\quad M = \bigoplus_{i=1}^{m} u_i K[Z_i] \] where \(u_i K[Z_i]\) is a Stanley space defined as follows: \(u_i\in M\) and \(Z_i\) is a subset of \(\{x_1,\ldots, x_n\}\) such that the \({\mathbb Z}^n\)-graded \(K\)-subspace \(u_i K[Z_i] \subset M\) is a free \(K[Z_i]\)-module. Then the Stanley depth \(\text{sdepth}(M)\) of \(M\) is defined to be \[ \text{sdepth}(M) = \max\{ \text{sdepth}({\mathcal D})\;:\; {\mathcal D}\text{ is a Stanley decomposition of \(M\)} \} \] where \(\text{sdepth}({\mathcal D}) = \min\{ \sharp{Z_i}\; :\; i=1,\ldots, m\}\). \textit{R. P. Stanley} conjectured [Invent. Math. 68, 175--193 (1982; Zbl 0516.10009)] that \(\text{depth}(M) \leq \text{sdepth}\) for all \({\mathbb Z}^n\)-graded \(S\)-modules \(M\). This conjecture is widely open and it is not even well understood how we can compute \(\text{sdepth}\). In this paper, the authors consider this conjecture in the case of \(M = I/J\) where \(J =(x^{b_i}:j=1,\ldots, r) \subset I = (x^{a_i}: i=1,\ldots, s) \subset S\) are two monomial ideals. They consider the characteristic poset \[ P^g_{I/J} = \{a\in {\mathbb Z}^n \; : \; x^a \in I\backslash J, a\leq g\} \] where \(g\in {\mathbb Z}^n\) is a fixed vector with \(a_i\leq g\) and \(b_j \leq g\) by componentwise comparison for all \(i,j\). They show the relation of a partition of the poset \(P^q_{I/J}\) and Stanley decomposition of \(I/J\), which implies that the Stanley depth can be computed by considering the finitely many different partitions of \(P^g_{I/J}\) (Theorem~2.1). The second result of this paper is about \(\text{fdepth}(M)\), a natural lower bound for both \(\text{depth}(M)\) and \(\text{sdepth}(M)\). A chain of \({\mathbb Z}^n\)-graded submodules of \(M\) \[ {\mathcal F}:\quad 0=M_0 \subset M_1\subset \cdots \subset M_m = M \] is called a prime filtration of \(M\) if \(M_i/M_{i-1}\cong (S/P_i)(-a_i)\) for some monomial prime ideal and \(a_i\in {\mathbb Z}^n\). We set \(\text{Supp}{\mathcal F} = \{P_1,\ldots, P_m\}\). Then we define \[ \text{fdepth}(M) = \max\{ \text{fdepth}({\mathcal F})\;:\; {\mathcal F} \text{ is a prime filtration} \} \] where \(\text{fdepth}({\mathcal F}) := \min \{\dim S/P\;:\; P\in\text{Supp}({\mathcal F}\}\). The authors show that \(\text{fdepth}(I/J)\) can be computed by considering finite partitions of \(P^g_{I/J}\) satisfying a special condition (Theorem~2.4 and Corollary~2.5). As applications of these formal results, it is shown that if a monomial ideal \(I\subset S\) is a monomial complete intersection ideal or of Borel type, then Stanley's conjecture holds for \(I\) and \(S/I\) (Proposition~3.2 and 3.7). In particular, for the monomial complete intersection case, \(\text{depth}\) and \(\text{fdepth}\) coincide.