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Suppose $\Delta$ is a pure simplicial complex on $n$ vertices having dimension $d$ and let $c = n-d-1$ be its codimension in the simplex. Terai and Yoshida proved that if the number of facets of $\Delta$ is at least $\binom{n}{c}-2c+1$, then $\Delta$ is Cohen-Macaulay. We improve this result by showing that these hypotheses imply the stronger condition that $\Delta$ is vertex decomposable. We give examples to show that this bound is optimal, and that the conclusion cannot be strengthened to the class of matroids or shifted complexes. We explore an application to Simon's Conjecture and discuss connections to other results from the literature., Comment: In this version, included a connection to geometric vertex decomposability in the end. Modified the statement of Lemma 3.3, and proof of Theorem 1, along with other minor changes. Set to appear in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics

We study three invariants of geometrically vertex decomposable ideals: the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity, the multiplicity, and the $a$-invariant. We show that these invariants can be computed recursively using the ideals that appear in the geometric vertex decomposition process. As an application, we prove that the $a$-invariant of a geometrically vertex decomposable ideal is non-positive. We also recover some previously known results in the literature including a formula for the regularity of the Stanley--Reisner ideal of a pure vertex decomposable simplicial complex, and proofs that some well-known families of ideals are Hilbertian. Finally, we apply our recursions to the study of toric ideals of bipartite graphs. Included among our results on this topic is a new proof for a known bound on the $a$-invariant of a toric ideal of a bipartite graph.

A celebrated theorem of Fr\"oberg gives a complete combinatorial classification of quadratic square-free monomial ideals with a linear resolution. A generalization of this theorem to higher degree square-free monomial ideals is an active area of research. The existence of a linear resolution of such ideals often depends on the field over which the polynomial ring is defined. Hence, it is too much to expect that in the higher degree case a linear resolution can be identified purely using a combinatorial feature of an associated combinatorial structure. However, some classes of ideals having linear resolutions have been identified using combinatorial structures. In the present paper, we use the notion of $r$-independence to construct an $r$-uniform hypergraph from the given graph. We then show that when the underlying graph is co-chordal, the corresponding edge ideal is vertex splittable, a condition stronger than having a linear resolution. We use this result to explicitly compute graded Betti numbers for various graph classes. Finally, we give a different proof for the existence of a linear resolution using the topological notion of $r$-collapsibility., Comment: Final version. Accepted for publication in Journal of Commutative Algebra

We consider Artinian level algebras arising from the whiskering of a graph. Employing a result by Dao-Nair we show that multiplication by a general linear form has maximal rank in degrees 1 and $n-1$ when the characteristic is not two, where $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph. Moreover, the multiplication is injective in degrees $

We introduce a family of graphs, which we call down-left graphs, and study their combinatorial and algebraic properties. We show that members of this family are well-covered, $C_5$-free, and vertex decomposable. By applying a result of H\`a-Woodroofe and Moradi--Khosh-Ahang, the (Castelnuovo-Mumford) regularity of the associated edge ideals is the induced matching number of the graph. As an application, we give a combinatorial interpretation for the regularity of the toric ideals of chordal bipartite graphs that are $(K_{3,3} \setminus e)$-free.

Let $G$ be a finite simple graph and let $I_G$ denote its associated toric ideal in the polynomial ring $R$. For each integer $n\geq 2$, we completely determine all the possible values for the tuple $({\rm reg}(R/I_G), {\rm deg}(h_{R/I_G}(t)),{\rm pdim}(R/I_G), {\rm depth}(R/I_G),\dim(R/I_G))$ when $G$ is a connected bipartite graph on $n$ vertices., Comment: 14 pages, updated references and added Remark 2.12, comments welcome

The Fiedler matrices are a large class of companion matrices that include the well-known Frobenius companion matrix. The Fiedler matrices are part of a larger class of companion matrices that can be characterized with a Hessenberg form. In this paper, we demonstrate that the Hessenberg form of the Fiedler companion matrices provides a straight-forward way to compare the condition numbers of these matrices. We also show that there are other companion matrices which can provide a much smaller condition number than any Fiedler companion matrix. We finish by exploring the condition number of a class of matrices obtained from perturbing a Frobenius companion matrix while preserving the characteristic polynomial., Comment: 16 pages; comments welcomed

We study the Hadamard product of two varieties $V$ and $W$, with particular attention to the situation when one or both of $V$ and $W$ is a binomial variety. The main result of this paper shows that when $V$ and $W$ are both binomial varieties, and the binomials that define $V$ and $W$ have the same binomial exponents, then the defining equations of $V \star W$ can be computed explicitly and directly from the defining equations of $V$ and $W$. This result recovers known results about Hadamard products of binomial hypersurfaces and toric varieties. Moreover, as an application of our main result, we describe a relationship between the Hadamard product of the toric ideal $I_G$ of a graph $G$ and the toric ideal $I_H$ of a subgraph $H$ of $G$. We also derive results about algebraic invariants of Hadamard products: assuming $V$ and $W$ are binomial with the same exponents, we show that $\text{deg}(V\star W) = \text{deg}(V)=\text{deg}(W)$ and $\dim(V\star W) = \dim(V)=\dim(W)$. Finally, given any (not necessarily binomial) projective variety $V$ and a point $p \in \mathbb{P}^n \setminus \mathbb{V}(x_0x_1\cdots x_n)$, subject to some additional minor hypotheses, we find an explicit binomial variety that describes all the points $q$ that satisfy $p \star V = q\star V$., Comment: 24 pages, comments welcome

Using the geometric vertex decomposition property first defined by Knutson, Miller, and Yong, a recursive definition for geometrically vertex decomposable ideals was given by Klein and Rajchgot. We introduce the Macaulay2 package GeometricDecomposability which provides a suite of tools to experiment and test the geometric vertex decomposability property of an ideal., Comment: 8 pages; revised version; to appear JSAG

The geometric vertex decomposability property for polynomial ideals is an ideal-theoretic generalization of the vertex decomposability property for simplicial complexes. Indeed, a homogeneous geometrically vertex decomposable ideal is radical and Cohen-Macaulay, and is in the Gorenstein liaison class of a complete intersection (glicci). In this paper, we initiate an investigation into when the toric ideal $I_G$ of a finite simple graph $G$ is geometrically vertex decomposable. We first show how geometric vertex decomposability behaves under tensor products, which allows us to restrict to connected graphs. We then describe a graph operation that preserves geometric vertex decomposability, thus allowing us to build many graphs whose corresponding toric ideals are geometrically vertex decomposable. Using work of Constantinescu and Gorla, we prove that toric ideals of bipartite graphs are geometrically vertex decomposable. We also propose a conjecture that all toric ideals of graphs with a square-free degeneration with respect to a lexicographic order are geometrically vertex decomposable. As evidence, we prove the conjecture in the case that the universal Gr\"obner basis of $I_G$ is a set of quadratic binomials. We also prove that some other families of graphs have the property that $I_G$ is glicci., Comment: 37 pages; in this revised version, Section 7 has been removed due to an error in the example found in previous versions

In 1999 Herzog and Hibi introduced componentwise linear ideals. A homogeneous ideal $I$ is componentwise linear if for all non-negative integers $d$, the ideal generated by the homogeneous elements of degree $d$ in $I$ has a linear resolution. For square-free monomial ideals, componentwise linearity is related via Alexander duality to the property of being sequentially Cohen-Macaulay for the corresponding simplicial complexes. In general, the property of being componentwise linear is not preserved by taking powers. In 2011, Herzog, Hibi, and Ohsugi conjectured that if $I$ is the cover ideal of a chordal graph, then $I^s$ is componentwise linear for all $s \geq 1$. We survey some of the basic properties of componentwise linear ideals, and then specialize to the progress on the Herzog-Hibi-Ohsugi conjecture during the last decade. We also survey the related problem of determining when the symbolic powers of a cover ideal are componentwise linear., Comment: 27 pages; comments welcome

We explore explicit virtual resolutions, as introduced by Berkesch, Erman, and Smith, for ideals of sets of points in $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$. Specifically, we describe a virtual resolution for a sufficiently general set of points $X$ in $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$ that only depends on $|X|$. We also improve an existence result of Berkesch, Erman, and Smith in the special case of points in $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$; more precisely, we give an effective bound for their construction that gives a virtual resolution of length two for any set of points in $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$., Comment: 19 pages

Fix a square-free monomial $m \in S = \mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$. The square-free principal Borel ideal generated by $m$, denoted ${\rm sfBorel}(m)$, is the ideal generated by all the square-free monomials that can be obtained via Borel moves from the monomial $m$. We give upper and lower bounds for the Waldschmidt constant of ${\rm sfBorel}(m)$ in terms of the support of $m$, and in some cases, exact values. For any rational $\frac{a}{b} \geq 1$, we show that there exists a square-free principal Borel ideal with Waldschmidt constant equal to $\frac{a}{b}$., Comment: 13 pages

Fix a poset $Q$ on $\{x_1,\ldots,x_n\}$. A $Q$-Borel monomial ideal $I \subseteq \mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$ is a monomial ideal whose monomials are closed under the Borel-like moves induced by $Q$. A monomial ideal $I$ is a principal $Q$-Borel ideal, denoted $I=Q(m)$, if there is a monomial $m$ such that all the minimal generators of $I$ can be obtained via $Q$-Borel moves from $m$. In this paper we study powers of principal $Q$-Borel ideals. Among our results, we show that all powers of $Q(m)$ agree with their symbolic powers, and that the ideal $Q(m)$ satisfies the persistence property for associated primes. We also compute the analytic spread of $Q(m)$ in terms of the poset $Q$.

The $k$-token graph $T_k(G)$ is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-subsets of vertices of a graph $G$, with two vertices of $T_k(G)$ adjacent if their symmetric difference is an edge of $G$. We explore when $T_k(G)$ is a well-covered graph, that is, when all of its maximal independent sets have the same cardinality. For bipartite graphs $G$, we classify when $T_k(G)$ is well-covered. For an arbitrary graph $G$, we show that if $T_2(G)$ is well-covered, then the girth of $G$ is at most four. We include upper and lower bounds on the independence number of $T_k(G)$, and provide some families of well-covered token graphs., Comment: 21 pages

Let $G$ be a finite simple connected graph on $[n]$ and $R = K[x_1, \ldots, x_n]$ the polynomial ring in $n$ variables over a field $K$. The edge ideal of $G$ is the ideal $I(G)$ of $R$ which is generated by those monomials $x_ix_j$ for which $\{i, j\}$ is an edge of $G$. In the present paper, the possible tuples $(n, {\rm depth} (R/I(G)), {\rm reg} (R/I(G)), \dim R/I(G), {\rm deg} \ h(R/I(G)))$, where ${\rm deg} \ h(R/I(G))$ is the degree of the $h$-polynomial of $R/I(G)$, arising from Cameron--Walker graphs on $[n]$ will be completely determined., Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures; revised and corrected

Fix an integer $n \geq 1$, and consider the set of all connected finite simple graphs on $n$ vertices. For each $G$ in this set, let $I(G)$ denote the edge ideal of $G$ in the polynomial ring $R = K[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$. We initiate a study of the set $\mathcal{RD}(n) \subseteq \mathbb{N}^2$ consisting of all the pairs $(r,d)$ where $r = {\rm reg}(R/I(G))$, the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity, and $d = {\rm deg} h_{R/I(G)}(t)$, the degree of the $h$-polynomial, as we vary over all the connected graphs on $n$ vertices. In particular, we identify sets $A(n)$ and $B(n)$ such that $A(n) \subseteq \mathcal{RD}(n) \subseteq B(n)$. When we restrict to the family of Cameron-Walker graphs on $n$ vertices, we can completely characterize all the possible $(r,d)$., Comment: 15 pages; comments welcomed

For all integers $4 \leq r \leq d$, we show that there exists a finite simple graph $G= G_{r,d}$ with toric ideal $I_G \subset R$ such that $R/I_G$ has (Castelnuovo-Mumford) regularity $r$ and $h$-polynomial of degree $d$. To achieve this goal, we identify a family of graphs such that the graded Betti numbers of the associated toric ideal agree with its initial ideal, and furthermore, this initial ideal has linear quotients. As a corollary, we can recover a result of Hibi, Higashitani, Kimura, and O'Keefe that compares the depth and dimension of toric ideals of graphs.

Let $I \subseteq R = \mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$ be a toric ideal, i.e., a binomial prime ideal. We investigate when the ideal $I$ can be "split" into the sum of two smaller toric ideals. For a general toric ideal $I$, we give a sufficient condition for this splitting in terms of the integer matrix that defines $I$. When $I = I_G$ is the toric ideal of a finite simple graph $G$, we give additional splittings of $I_G$ related to subgraphs of $G$. When there exists a splitting $I = I_1+I_2$ of the toric ideal, we show that in some cases we can describe the (multi-)graded Betti numbers of $I$ in terms of the (multi-)graded Betti numbers of $I_1$ and $I_2$., Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures; v2: error corrected, improved exposition; v3: revision based on comments from the referee

We compute the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of the edge ideals of two families of circulant graphs, which includes all cubic circulant graphs. A feature of our approach is to combine bounds on the regularity, the projective dimension, and the reduced Euler characteristic to derive an exact value for the regularity., Comment: 13 pages; comments welcomed

It is well-known that the zero forcing number of a graph provides a lower bound on the minimum rank of a graph. In this paper we bound and characterize the zero forcing number of certain circulant graphs, including some bipartite circulants, cubic circulants, and circulants which are torus products, to obtain bounds on the minimum rank and the maximum nullity. We also evaluate when the zero forcing number will give equality., Comment: 14 pages; comments welcomed

For any two integers $d,r \geq 1$, we show that there exists an edge ideal $I(G)$ such that the ${\rm reg}\left(R/I(G)\right)$, the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of $R/I(G)$, is $r$, and ${\rm deg} (h_{R/I(G)}(t))$, the degree of the $h$-polynomial of $R/I(G)$, is $d$. Additionally, if $G$ is a graph on $n$ vertices, we show that ${\rm reg}\left(R/I(G)\right) + {\rm deg} (h_{R/I(G)}(t)) \leq n$., Comment: 10 pages; comments welcomed

We compute the graded Betti numbers for the toric ideal of a family of graphs constructed by adjoining a cycle to a complete bipartite graph. The key observation is that this family admits an initial ideal which has linear quotients. As a corollary, we compute the Hilbert series and $h$-vector for all the toric ideals of graphs in this family., Comment: 12 pages; revised and corrected; to appear in Journal of Algebra and its Applications

It remains an open problem to classify the Hilbert functions of double points in $\mathbb{P}^2$. Given a valid Hilbert function $H$ of a zero-dimensional scheme in $\mathbb{P}^2$, we show how to construct a set of fat points $Z \subseteq \mathbb{P}^2$ of double and reduced points such that $H_Z$, the Hilbert function of $Z$, is the same as $H$. In other words, we show that any valid Hilbert function $H$ of a zero-dimensional scheme is the Hilbert function of a set of a positive number of double points and some reduced points. For some families of valid Hilbert functions, we are also able to show that $H$ is the Hilbert function of only double points. In addition, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the Hilbert function of a scheme of a double points, or double points plus one additional reduced point, to be the Hilbert function of points with support on a star configuration of lines., Comment: 22 pages; more detail added and small corrections throughout. This version to appear in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra

A square-free monomial ideal $I$ of $k[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$ is said to be an $f$-ideal if the facet complex and non-face complex associated with $I$ have the same $f$-vector. We show that $I$ is an $f$-ideal if and only if its Newton complementary dual $\widehat{I}$ is also an $f$-ideal. Because of this duality, previous results about some classes of $f$-ideals can be extended to a much larger class of $f$-ideals. An interesting by-product of our work is an alternative formulation of the Kruskal-Katona theorem for $f$-vectors of simplicial complexes., Comment: 11 pages; revised and corrected; to appear in Canadian Mathematical Bulletin

Bocci, Carlini, and Kileel have shown that the square-free Hadamard product of a finite set of points $Z$ that all lie on a line $\ell$ in $\mathbb{P}^n$ produces a star configuration of codimension $n$. In this paper we introduce a construction using the Hadamard product to construct star configurations of codimension $c$. In the case that $c = n= 2$, our construction produces the star configurations of Bocci, Carlini, and Kileel. We will call any star configuration that can be constructed using our approach a Hadamard star configuration. Our main result is a classification of Hadamard star configurations., Comment: 10 pages; comments welcome

Ehrenborg, Govindaiah, Park, and Readdy recently introduced the van der Waerden complex, a pure simplicial complex whose facets correspond to arithmetic progressions. Using techniques from combinatorial commutative algebra, we classify when these pure simplicial complexes are vertex decomposable or not Cohen-Macaulay. As a corollary, we classify the van der Waerden complexes that are shellable., Comment: 7 pages

A $\Bbbk$-configuration is a set of points $\mathbb{X}$ in $\mathbb{P}^2$ that satisfies a number of geometric conditions. Associated to a $\Bbbk$-configuration is a sequence $(d_1,\ldots,d_s)$ of positive integers, called its type, which encodes many of its homological invariants. We distinguish $\Bbbk$-configurations by counting the number of lines that contain $d_s$ points of $\mathbb{X}$. In particular, we show that for all integers $m \gg 0$, the number of such lines is precisely the value of $\Delta \mathbf{H}_{m\mathbb{X}}(m d_s -1)$. Here, $\Delta \mathbf{H}_{m\mathbb{X}}(-)$ is the first difference of the Hilbert function of the fat points of multiplicity $m$ supported on $\mathbb{X}$., Comment: Revised version of paper; most changes minor except the proof of Lemma 4.1 which has been rewritten; to appear in Illinois Journal of Mathematics

We explore how the combinatorial arrangement of prescribed zeros in a matrix affects the possible eigenvalues that the matrix can obtain. We demonstrate that there are inertially arbitrary patterns having a digraph with no 2-cycle, unlike what happens for nonzero patterns. We develop a class of patterns that are refined inertially arbitrary but not spectrally arbitrary, making use of the property of a properly signed nest. We include a characterization of the inertially arbitrary and refined inertially arbitrary patterns of order three, as well as the patterns of order four with the least number of nonzero entries.

Let $I$ be a homogeneous ideal of $\Bbbk[x_0,\ldots,x_n]$. To compare $I^{(m)}$, the $m$-th symbolic power of $I$, with $I^m$, the regular $m$-th power, we introduce the $m$-th symbolic defect of $I$, denoted $\operatorname{sdefect}(I,m)$. Precisely, $\operatorname{sdefect}(I,m)$ is the minimal number of generators of the $R$-module $I^{(m)}/I^m$, or equivalently, the minimal number of generators one must add to $I^m$ to make $I^{(m)}$. In this paper, we take the first step towards understanding the symbolic defect by considering the case that $I$ is either the defining ideal of a star configuration or the ideal associated to a finite set of points in $\mathbb{P}^2$. We are specifically interested in identifying ideals $I$ with $\operatorname{sdefect}(I,2) = 1$., Comment: To appear in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra; revised at referees' suggestion. Fixed typos and clarified writing, included additional references, shortened proof of Thm 6.3