Simplicial resolutions of powers of square-free monomial ideals (Q6122139)

\textit{D. Taylor} in her thesis [Ideals generated by monomials in an R-sequence. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Chicago (1966)] resented a free resolution, which is called the \textit{Taylor resolution}. It is so powerful to connect commutative algebra and other fields such as combinatorics and topology. Unfortunately, even though every monomial ideal has a Taylor resolution, the Taylor resolution is often far from minimal. Particularly, for powers of ideals it is almost never minimal due to certain syzygies that are automatically created when taking powers. The main aim of this work is to find a simplicial complex smaller than Taylor's complex that supports a free resolution of \(I^r\) when \(I\) has \(q\) square-free monomial generators. In fact, the authors construct a subcomplex \(\mathbb{L}^r_q\) of the Taylor simplex, which depends only on the integers \(r\) and \(q\), and contains a subcomplex supporting a free resolution of \(I^r\). Indeed, \(\mathbb{L}^{1}_q\) is the well-known Taylor complex, which is a simplex with \(q\) vertices that supports a free resolution of any monomial ideal with \(q\) generators. The case \(r = 2\) has been studied in [\textit{S. M. Cooper} et al., Assoc. Women Math. Ser. 29, 193--205 (2022; Zbl 1496.13031)]. The main result of this paper is as follows: Theorem 5.9 (Main Result). Let \(q\geq 1\) and let \(I\) be a monomial ideal minimally generated by square-free monomials \(m_1,\ldots, m_q\). By labeling each vertex \(\mathbf{a}\) of the simplicial complexes below with the monomial \(\mathbf{m}^{\mathbf{a}}\), the following hold for any \(r\geq 1\): \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] \(\mathbb{L}^r_q\) supports a free resolution of \(I^r\); \item[(ii)] \(\mathbb{L}^r(I)\) supports a free resolution of \(I^r\). \end{itemize} In addition, the following proposition gives a full characterization of the conditions on \(r\) and \(q\) that guarantee \(\mathbb{L}^r_q\) supports a minimal free resolution of \(I^r\) for some ideal \(I\). Proposition 7.11 (When \(\mathbb{L}^r_q\) supports a minimal resolution of some \(I^r\)). If \(r\) and \(q\) are positive integers, then \(\mathbb{L}^r_q\) supports a minimal free resolution of \(I^r\) for some ideal \(I\) minimally generated by \(q\) square-free monomials if and only if one of the following holds \begin{itemize} \item \(q=1\) and \(r\geq 1\); \item \(q=2\) and \(1\leq r \leq 4\); \item \(q\geq 3\) and \(1\leq r \leq 2\). \end{itemize} Finally, the authors in Section 6 (Theorem 6.1) explored the bounds on the Betti numbers of \(I^r\) that follow from the main result.