Associated primes of spline complexes (Q5963399)

The spline complexes were introduced by \textit{H. Schenck} and \textit{M. Stillman} in [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 117--118, 535--548 (1997; Zbl 0902.41010)]. In the paper under review, the author studies the associated primes of homology modules of spline complex. He identifies the associated primes of the homology modules of the spline complex as linear primes arising from the hyperplane arrangement of affine spans of codimension one faces (Theorem 5.5). Then he identifies the associated primes of minimal possible codimension (Theorem 5.7). In this way, he extends Theorem 2.6 of [\textit{H. Schenck}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 364, No. 8, 4041--4051 (2012; Zbl 1408.14166)]. The author uses Theorems 5.5 and 5.7 to give two applications to computations of dimension of the algebra of mixed splines over a fan. The first application is a computation of the third coefficient of the Hilbert polynomial of this algebra, including cases where vanishing is imposed along arbitrary codimension one faces of the boundary of the fan, extending computations by Geramita-Schenck in the simplicial case and McDonald-Schenck in the polytopal case. The second one is a description of the fourth coefficient of the Hilbert polynomial of the algebra of mixed splines over simplicial fans. Using this, a result of Alfeld- Schumaker-Whiteley on the generic dimension of \(\mathrm{C}^1\) tetrahedral splines in large degree is re-derived.