Gröbner bases and invariant theory (Q909717)

The relationship between Gröbner basis methods and the straightening algorithm in the bracket algebra is investigated. The straightening algorithm is a fairly efficient normal form procedure for arbitrary polynomial functions on the Grassmann variety. Gröbner bases can be used mainly for calculations in the residue ring, but also for a wide range of applications (e.g. finding zeros of the polynomials in an ideal). The main result of the paper shows that the straightening algorithm can be interpreted as the normal form routine with respect to a specific Gröbner basis. The authors show that the straightening syzygies form a Gröbner basis of the syzygy ideal with respect to the natural tableaux order, and also that the reduced Gröbner basis for this syzygy ideal can be given by the unique representations of degree 2 non-standard tableaux as linear combinations of standard tableaux. The authors suggest the fruitfulness of the method in research areas where a geometric intuition is strongly needed, whereas the classical algebraization method leads to loss of geometric information.