Alexander duality and Stanley depth of multigraded modules (Q661878)

This paper is concerned with the Stanley depth of a multigraded module. Let \(S=K[x_{1},\dots,x_{n}]\) be a polynomial ring in \(n\) variables over a field \(K\) and \(M\) a finitely generated multigraded (i.e. \(\mathbb{Z}^{n}\)-graded) \(S\)-module. Given a \(\mathbb{Z}^{n}\)-homogeneous element \(m \in M\) and a subset \(Z \subset \{x_{1},\dots,x_{n}\}\), let \(mK[Z] \subset M\) be the linear \(K\)-subspace of all elements of the form \(mf\), \(f \in K[Z]\). This subspace is a Stanley space of dimension \(|Z|\), if \(mK[Z]\) is a free \(K[Z]\)-module. A Stanley decomposition \(\mathcal{D}\) of \(M\) is a presentation of the \(K\)-vector space \(M\) as a finite direct sum of Stanley spaces. That is, \(\mathcal{D}=\bigoplus_{i=1}^{s}m_{i}K[z_{i}]=M\). Let \(\text{sd}(M)\) be the set of Stanley decompositions of \(M\). For \(\mathcal{D}=\bigoplus_{i=1}^{s}m_{i}K[z_{i}] \in \text{sd}(M)\), set \(\text{sdepth}(\mathcal{D}):=\text{min} \{|Z_{i}| \mid i=1,\dots,s\}\), and call it the Stanley depth of \(\mathcal{D}\). The Stanley depth of \(M\) is defined by \(\text{sdepth}(M):=\text{max}\{\text{sdepth}(\mathcal{D})| \mathcal{D} \in \text{sd}(M)\}\). Stanley conjectured in \textit{R. P. Stanley} [Invent. Math. 68, 175--193 (1982; Zbl 0516.10009)] that the inequality \(\text{sdepth}(M) \geq \text{depth}(M)\) holds, for all finitely generated multigraded \(S\)-modules \(M\). In the paper under review several tools for Stanley's conjecture are developed, and a few partial answers are given. For example, they show that taking the Alexander duality twice (but with different centers) is useful for this subject. Finally they prove that Stanley's conjecture holds for the quotient \(S/I\), where \(I\) is a cogeneric monomial ideal.