Extremal Rees algebras (Q357877)

The main goal of the paper under review is the study of the defining equations of the Rees algebras \(R[It]\) of classes of almost complete intersection ideals when one of its important metrics, especially depth or reduction number, attains an extreme value in the class. The authors show that such algebras occur frequently and develop novel means to identify them. As a consequence, interesting properties of such algebras have been discovered. They argue that several questions, while often placed in the general context of Rees algebra theory, may be viewed as subproblems in this more narrowly defined environment. Since a main source of extremal Rees algebras lies in the construction of approximation complexes, the authors study them in Section 2. In Section 3 the authors begin their treatment of the properties of an ideal when its Rees algebra \(A = R[It]\) is almost Cohen-Macaulay. In Section 4, they give several classes of Rees algebras which are almost Cohen-Macaulay. The authors closed the paper by giving the following conjecture. Conjecture. Let \(I\) be a monomial ideal of \(k[x_1, \dots , x_d]\). If \(I\) is an almost complete intersection of finite colength, its Rees algebra \(R[It]\) is almost Cohen-Macaulay.