University of Minnesota Combinatorics Seminar: 2020-2021

Date: 10/16/2020

Speaker: Ayah Almousa

Polarizations of Powers of Graded Maximal Ideals
Given a monomial ideal, one can "polarize" it to a square-free monomial ideal that has all of the same homological invariants as the original one. Many commutative algebraists are familiar with the use of the "standard" polarization, but the first major use of a nonstandard polarization was by Uwe Nagel and Vic Reiner in the early 2000s, who used the "box polarization" to produce a minimal cellular resolution for strongly stable ideals. This leads to the natural question: what other ways are there to polarize a monomial ideal, and what other applications might there be for these non-standard polarizations? In this talk, I will give a complete combinatorial characterization of all possible polarizations of powers of the graded maximal ideal in a polynomial ring. I will also give a combinatorial description of their Alexander duals and discuss applications of polarizations to commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and combinatorics. This is joint work with Gunnar Fløystad and Henning Lohne.

Polarizations of Powers of Graded Maximal Ideals

Given a monomial ideal, one can "polarize" it to a square-free monomial ideal that has all of the same homological invariants as the original one. Many commutative algebraists are familiar with the use of the "standard" polarization, but the first major use of a nonstandard polarization was by Uwe Nagel and Vic Reiner in the early 2000s, who used the "box polarization" to produce a minimal cellular resolution for strongly stable ideals. This leads to the natural question: what other ways are there to polarize a monomial ideal, and what other applications might there be for these non-standard polarizations? In this talk, I will give a complete combinatorial characterization of all possible polarizations of powers of the graded maximal ideal in a polynomial ring. I will also give a combinatorial description of their Alexander duals and discuss applications of polarizations to commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and combinatorics. This is joint work with Gunnar Fløystad and Henning Lohne.