Gröbner bases of nested configurations (Q952559)

The paper introduces a new family of configurations of monomials whose corresponding toric ideals have quadratic Gröbner bases. An important problem in commutative algebra is to determine when the polynomial ring \(K[A]\), when \(A\) is a configuration of monomials, is \textit{Koszul} (has a linear minimal resolution). Since a sufficient condition for this is that the toric ideal corresponding to \(A\) has a quadratic Gröbner basis it is important to be able to construct large families of such configurations. The authors approach this by defining a \textit{nested configuration} \(A(B_1, \ldots, B_d)\) given configurations \(A, B_1, \ldots, B_d\). The main theorem of the paper states that the resulting toric ideal will have a quadratic Gröbner basis if separately those of \(A, B_1, \ldots, B_d\) do. The construction is efficient and results in a large family of configurations whose toric ideals with quadratic Gröbner bases. The algorithm generalizes Segre/Veronese type configurations. Several useful and enlightening examples are used throughout. A brief section also details how the problem can be motivated in the field of statistics.