The colorful Helly theorem and colorful resolutions of ideals (Q531330)

This is a paper about the interaction of results in convex geometry, combinatorial topology and commutative algebra. The classical Helly theorem (Helly 1908) is a basic result in convex geometry. It was generalized by Helly himself (1930) to a topological version, cf. the survey by \textit{J. Eckhoff} [Handbook of convex geometry. Volume A. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 389--448 (1993; Zbl 0791.52009)]. Further generalizations of Helly's theorem to colorful versions are due to \textit{I. Barany} [Discrete Math. 40, 141--152 (1982; Zbl 0492.52005)] and \textit{G. Kalai} and \textit{R. Meshulam} [Adv. Math. 191, No. 2, 305--311 (2005; Zbl 1064.52008)]. The present paper establishes connections between Helly type theorems and results in commutative algebra. The author demonstrates in section 2 that the topological Helly theorem and the weaker version of the Auslander-Buchsbaum theorem can be viewed as different versions of the same phenomenon. The main results of the paper are contained in section 4, in which the colorful Helly theorem is translated to the algebraic side by the notion of cellular resolution and by the Stanley-Reisner ring of the nerve complex. Using these translations the author generalizes results by Kalai and Meshulam from squarefree monomial ideals to multigraded ideals (Theorem 4.1) and gives a syzegetic version of Helly's theorem (Theorem 4.3). A third main result is Theorem 4.7, in which the regularity of a multigraded ideal with elements of pure color is bounded by the regularity of a monomial ideal.