The slope of the \(\operatorname{v}\)-function and the Waldschmidt constant (Q7007224)

Suppose that \(R=\bigoplus_{d\in \mathbb{N}}R_d\) is an \(\mathbb{N}\)-graded Noetherian ring, where \(R_0\) is a field, \(I\subseteq R\) is a proper graded ideal, and \(\mathbb{N}\) denotes the set of nonnegative integers. Also, let \(\mathrm{Ass}(I)\) denote the set of associated primes of \(I\). Then the \textit{\(\mathrm{v}\)-number} of \(I\), denoted by \(\mathrm{v}(I)\), is the following \(\mathrm{v}(I) := \min\{d \geq 0 \mid \text{~there exists~} f \in R_d \text{~and~} \mathfrak{p}\in \mathrm{Ass}(I) \text{~satisfying~} I : f = \mathfrak{p}\}.\) In particular, for each \(\mathfrak{p}\in \mathrm{Ass}(I)\), we can locally define the \(\mathrm{v}\)-number, called the \textit{local} \(\mathrm{v}\)-number of \(I\) at \(\mathfrak{p}\) and denoted by \(\mathrm{v}_\mathfrak{p}(I)\), as follows: \(\mathrm{v}_{\mathfrak{p}}(I) := \min\{d \geq 0 \mid \text{~there exists~} f\in R_d \text{~satisfying~} I : f = \mathfrak{p}\}.\) The main aim of this work is to investigate the asymptotic behavior of the \( \mathrm{v} \)-number associated with a Noetherian graded filtration \( \mathcal{I} = \{I_{[k]}\}_{k \geq 0} \) of a Noetherian \( \mathbb{N} \)-graded domain \( R \). Recent results have shown that the function \(\mathrm{v}(I_{[k]}) \) becomes periodically linear for sufficiently large \( k \). In particular, the authors prove that all such linear functions share a common slope; that is, \(\lim_{k \to \infty} \frac{\mathrm{v}(I_{[k]})}{k}\) exists and equals \(\lim_{k \to \infty} \frac{\alpha(I_{[k]})}{k},\) where \( \alpha(I) \) denotes the smallest degree of a non-zero element in \( I \). Moreover, for any Noetherian symbolic filtration \( \mathcal{I} = \{I^{(k)}\}_{k \geq 0} \), where \(I^{(k)}\) denotes the \(k\)-th symbolic power of the ideal \(I\), it follows that \(\lim_{k \to \infty} \frac{\mathrm{v}(I^{(k)})}{k} = \widehat{\alpha}(I),\) the Waldschmidt constant of \( I \). In the sequel, for a non-equigenerated square-free monomial ideal \( I \), the authors show that \(\mathrm{v}(I^{(k)}) \leq \operatorname{reg}(R/I^{(k)})\) for suficiently large \(k\). Furthermore, for ideals satisfying the symbolic strong persistence property, the authors express a linear upper bound for \( \mathrm{v}(I^{(k)}) \). To see an application, they derive criteria for a square-free monomial ideal \( I \) to satisfy \(\mathrm{v}(I^{(k)}) \leq \operatorname{reg}(R/I^{(k)})\) for all \(k \geq 1,\) and provide several supporting examples. Finally, for any simple graph \( G \), the authors verify that \(\mathrm{v}(J(G)^{(k)}) \leq \operatorname{reg}(R/J(G)^{(k)})\) for all \(k \geq 1,\) and that \(\mathrm{v}(J(G)^{(k)}) = \operatorname{reg}(R/J(G)^{(k)}) = \alpha(J(G)^{(k)}) - 1 \quad \text{for all } k \geq 1\) if and only if \( G \) is a Cohen-Macaulay very-well covered graph, where \( J(G) \) denotes the cover ideal of \(G\).