Cohen-Macaulay admissible clutters (Q847969)

Let \(K\) be a field and \(R= K[x_1.\dots, x_n]\) the polynomial ring. Then by identifying square-free monomials in \(R\) and subsets of \(\{x_1,\dots, x_n\}\), which is viewed as a set of vertices, we can study square-free monomial ideals through combinatorics of clutter (or simple hypergraph). A clutter \({\mathcal C}\) consists of a finite set \(V({\mathcal C}) = \{x_1, \dots, x_n\}\) of vertices and the edges \(E({\mathcal C})\), which is a family of nonempty subsets of \(V({\mathcal C})\) with no nontrivial containments. For a clutter \({\mathcal C}\), we have the corresponding square-free monomial ideal \(I({\mathcal C}) = \langle x^e = \prod_{x_i\in{e}}x_i\mid e\in E({\mathcal C}) \rangle\). A subset \(U\subset V({\mathcal C})\) is called a vertex cover of \({\mathcal C}\) if for every edge \(e\in E({\mathcal C})\) we have \(U\cap e \neq\emptyset\), and we say that a clutter \({\mathcal C}\) is unmixed if all its minimal vertex covers have the same cardinality. If there exist \(e_1,\dots, e_g\in E({\mathcal C})\) with \(g = \text{ht}I({\mathcal C})\) giving a partition of the set \(V({\mathcal C})\) and another partition of \(X^1,\dots, X^d\) \((d>0)\) of \(V({\mathcal C})\), called color classes, satisfying a certain combinatorial condition with regard to the elements of \(E({\mathcal C})\), the clutter \({\mathcal C}\) is called admissible. In the paper under review, the authors consider the conjecture raised in [\textit{S. Morey, E. Reyes} and \textit{R.\ H.\ Villarreal}, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 212, No. 7, 1770--1786 (2008; Zbl 1141.13017)], namely if \({\mathcal C}\) is unmixed and admissible, then \(I({\mathcal C})\subset R\) should be Cohen-Macaulay. They show that the conjecture is true in the case that \(\text{ht}I({\mathcal C}) = 2\) and \(3\) and \({\mathcal C}\) is uniform, which means that all edges have the same cardinality (Theorem~3.1 and Theorem~4.1). However, there are also counter-examples to the conjecture. Namely, if \(g=\text{ht}I({\mathcal C})\geq 4\), there always exists a uniform, admissible and unmixed clutter \({\mathcal C}\) with \(\text{ht}I({\mathcal C}) =g\) such that \(I({\mathcal C})\) is not Cohen-Macaulay (Theorem~5.5). But the authors also show that, in the case of \(\text{ht}I({\mathcal C})=4\), if \({\mathcal C}\) is uniform, admissible, unmixed and Alexander dual \(I({\mathcal C})^\vee\) has linear quotients [\textit{J.\ Herzog} and \textit{Y.\ Takayama}, in: The Roos Festschrift volume~2, Homology Homotopy Appl. 4, No. 2(2), 277--294, electronic only (2002; Zbl 1028.13008)], then \(I({\mathcal C})\) is Cohen-Macaulay (Theorem~5.3). On the other hand, in the case that all symbolic powers of \(I({\mathcal C})\) are the same as the usual powers and \(\text{ht}I({\mathcal C})=2\), the converse statement of the conjecture also holds (Theorem~3.7).