Symbolic powers of monomial ideals and vertex cover algebras (Q869844)

The aim of this paper is to introduce and study a special class of symbolic Rees algebras, namely vertex cover algebras of weighted simplicial complexes. It is proved that symbolic Rees algebras of monomial ideals are finitely generated and that such an algebra is normal and Cohen-Macaulay if the associated monomial ideal is squarefree. For simple graphs, it is shown that the vertex cover algebras are generated by elements of degree 2, and they are standard graded if and only if the graphs are bipartite. Also, in the paper there is given a general upper bound for the maximal degree of the generators of vertex cover algebras (see Theorem 5.6).