Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and defining equations of a locally Cohen-Macaulay algebra (Q4938527)

Let \(K\) be an infinite field, \(I\) a homogeneous ideal of the polynomial ring \(S=K[X_1,\dots,X_n]\) and \(R=S/I\). The Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of \(R\) is the number \(\text{reg} R= \max\{i+j\mid H^i_{\mathfrak m} (R)_j\neq 0\}\) where \({\mathfrak m}\) is the irrelevant maximal ideal of \(R\). Assume that \(R\) is \(d\)-dimensional and that \(I\) is generated by the homogeneous elements \(f_1,\dots,f_p\) of degrees \(d_1\leq\cdots\leq d_p\), respectively. Set \(i_t= \min\{i \mid\dim S/(f_1, \dots, f_i) =n-t\}\) for \(t=1,\dots,n-d\). The sequence \((d_{i_1}, \dots, d_{i_{n-d}})\) is independent of the special choice of the generators, and was introduced by Briançon as the ``characteristic multidegree'' of \(I\). Let, in addition, \(R\) be a generalized Cohen-Macaulay ring, which means that \(H^i_{\mathfrak m}(R)\) has finite length for all \(i<d\). Then \(\lambda_i= \min\{q\geq 0\mid{\mathfrak m}^qH^i_{\mathfrak m} (R)=0\}\) is finite for \(i<d\), and the author's main result says that \[ \text{reg} R\leq d_{i_1}+ \cdots +d_{i_{n-d}}- (n-d)+\max \{\lambda_0+ \cdots+ \lambda_{d-1}- 2,0\} \] in this case. If \(R\) is a Buchsbaum ring, then this can be improved to \(\text{reg} R\leq d_{i_1}+ \cdots+ d_{i_{n-d}} -(n-d)\). In the final section of the paper the author gives some bounds for the maximal degree of the elements in an arbitrary Gröbner basis of \(I\) in case \(\dim R\leq 1\). Furthermore, if \(R\) is a generalized Cohen-Macaulay ring of dimension \(\geq 1\), he proves that the minimal number of elements of a Gröbner basis of \(I\) is bounded above by \(n\sum^{d-1}_{i=0} {d-1\choose i}\text{length} \bigl(H^i_{\mathfrak m} (R)\bigr)+ (n-d)e(R)\), provided one considers a certain reverse lexicographic order on \(S\). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0921.00043].