Arithmetical rank of strings and cycles (Q521354)

Let \(\mathbb{K}\) be a field and \(R=\mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\) be the polynomial ring in \(n\) variables over \(\mathbb{K}\). For an ideal \(I\) of \(R\), the \textit{arithmetical rank} of \(I\) is denoted by \(\text{ara}(I)\) and is defined as the smallest integer \(u\) for which there exist \(q_1, \ldots, q_u\in R\) such that \(\sqrt{\langle q_1, \ldots,q_u\rangle}=\sqrt{I}\). To a given squarefree monomial ideal \(I\subseteq R\), one can associate a hypergraph \(\mathcal{H}(I)\), as follows. Assume that \(G(I)=\{m_1, \ldots, m_{\mu}\}\) denotes the set of minimal monomial generators of \(I\). Then the hypergraph \(\mathcal{H}(I)\) is defined as \[ \mathcal{H}(I)=\big\{\{j\in[\mu]: x_i|m_j\}: i=1, \ldots, n\big\}. \] In the paper under review, the authors prove that \(\text{ara}(I)=\text{pd}(R/I)\) when \(\mathcal{H}(I)\) is a string or a cycle hypergraph.