Consider the affine space consisting of pairs of matrices $(A,B)$ of fixed size, and its closed subvariety given by the rank conditions $\operatorname{rank} A \leq a$, $\operatorname{rank} B \leq b$ and $\operatorname{rank} (A\cdot B) \leq c$, for three non-negative integers $a,b,c$. These varieties are precisely the orbit closures of representations for the equioriented $A_3$ quiver. In this paper we construct the (equivariant) minimal free resolutions of the defining ideals of such varieties. We show how this problem is equivalent to determining the cohomology groups of the tensor product of two Schur functors of tautological bundles on a 2-step flag variety. We provide several techniques for the determination of these groups, which is of independent interest.
We give a description of the minimal primes of the ideal generated by the 2 x 2 adjacent minors of a generic matrix. We also compute the complete prime decomposition of the ideal of adjacent m x m minors of an m x n generic matrix when the characteristic of the ground field is zero. A key intermediate result is the proof that the ideals which appear as minimal primes are, in fact, prime ideals. This introduces a large new class of mixed determinantal ideals that are prime.
This paper has two aims. The first is to study ideals of minors of matrices whose entries are among the variables of a polynomial ring. Specifically, we describe matrices whose ideals of minors of a given size are prime. The main result in the first part of this paper is a theorem which gives sufficient conditions for the ideal of minors of a matrix to be prime. This theorem is general enough to include interesting examples, such as the ideal of maximal minors of catalecticant matrices and their generalisations discussed in the second part of the paper. The second aim of this paper is to settl…
We study higher jumping numbers and generalized test ideals associated to determinantal ideals over a field of positive characteristic. We work in positive characteristic and give a complete characterization of both families for ideals generated by maximal minors; and make a conjecture for the general case. Although these invariants are understood asymptotically - as their positive characteristic grows to infinity they essentially coincide with their characteristic zero analogues - there are known examples where the behavior in positive characteristic differs significantly from that of charact…
Here we consider the image of the principal minor map of symmetric matrices over an arbitrary unique factorization domain $R$. By exploiting a connection with symmetric determinantal representations, we characterize the image of the principal minor map through the condition that certain polynomials coming from so-called Rayleigh differences are squares in the polynomial ring over $R$. In almost all cases, one can characterize the image of the principal minor map using the orbit of Cayley's hyperdeterminant under the action of $(SL_2(R))^{n} \rtimes S_{n}$. Over the complex numbers, this recove…
The classical "generalized principal ideal theorems" of Macaulay, Eagon-Northcott, and others give sharp bounds on the heights of determinantal ideals in arbitrary rings. But in regular local rings (or graded polynomial rings) these are far from sharp, and various questions about vector bundles, as well as other questions in commutative algebra, amount to asking what the real bounds are. We give partial answers, and more generally we prove new height bounds in local rings of given embedding codimension. Our theorems extend and sharpen results of Faltings and Bruns.
We compute the GL-equivariant description of the local cohomology modules with support in the ideal of maximal minors of a generic matrix, as well as of those with support in the ideal of 2n x 2n Pfaffians of a (2n+1)x(2n+1) generic skew-symmetric matrix. As an application, we characterize the Cohen-Macaulay modules of covariants for the action of the special linear group SL(G) on G^m. The main tool we develop is a method for computing certain Ext modules based on the geometric technique for computing syzygies and on Matlis duality.
An ideal I in a polynomial ring S has linear powers if all the powers I^k of I have a linear free resolution. We show that the ideal of maximal minors of a sufficiently general matrix with linear entries has linear powers. The required genericity is expressed in terms of the heights of the ideals of lower order minors. In particular we prove that every rational normal scroll has linear powers.
We describe some of the determinantal ideals attached to symmetric, exterior and tensor powers of a matrix. The methods employed use elements of Zariski's theory of complete ideals and of representation theory.
Suppose that k is a field of characteristic zero, X is an r by s matrix of indeterminates, where r \leq s, and R = k[X] is the polynomial ring over k in the entries of X. We study the local cohomology modules H^i_I(R), where I is the ideal of R generated by the maximal minors of X. We identify the indices i for which these modules vanish, compute H^i_I(R) at the highest nonvanishing index, i = r(s-r)+1, and characterize all nonzero ones as submodules of certain indecomposable injective modules. These results are consequences of more general theorems regarding linearly reductive groups acting o…
Secant varieties to Veronese embeddings of projective space are classical varieties whose equations are not completely understood. Minors of catalecticant matrices furnish some of their equations, and in some situations even generate their ideals. Geramita conjectured that this is the case for the secant line variety of the Veronese variety, namely that its ideal is generated by the 3x3 minors of any of the "middle" catalecticants. Part of this conjecture is the statement that the ideals of 3x3 minors are equal for most catalecticants, and this was known to hold set-theoretically. We prove the…
We study algebraic and homological properties of the ideal of submaximal minors of a sparse generic symmetric matrix. This ideal is generated by all $(n-1)$-minors of a symmetric $n \times n$ matrix whose entries in the upper triangle are distinct variables or zeros and the zeros are only allowed at off-diagonal places. The surviving off-diagonal entries are encoded as a simple graph $G$ with $n$ vertices. We prove that the minimal free resolution of this ideal is obtained from the case without any zeros via a simple pruning procedure, extending methods of Boocher. This allows us to compute al…
We describe noncommutative desingularizations of determinantal varieties, determinantal varieties defined by minors of generic symmetric matrices, and pfaffian varieties defined by pfaffians of generic anti-symmetric matrices. For maximal minors of square matrices and symmetric matrices, this gives a non-commutative crepant resolution. Along the way, we describe a method to calculate the quiver with relations for any non-commutative desingularizations coming from exceptional collections over partial flag varieties.
We compute the local cohomology modules H_Y^(X,O_X) in the case when X is the complex vector space of n x n symmetric, respectively skew-symmetric matrices, and Y is the closure of the GL-orbit consisting of matrices of any fixed rank, for the natural action of the general linear group GL on X. We describe the D-module composition factors of the local cohomology modules, and compute their multiplicities explicitly in terms of generalized binomial coefficients. One consequence of our work is a formula for the cohomological dimension of ideals of even minors of a generic symmetric matrix: in the…
It is well-known that the Plücker relations generate the ideal of relations of the maximal minors of a generic matrix. In this paper we discuss the relations between minors of a (non-maximal) fixed size. We will exhibit minimal relations in degrees 2 (non-Plücker in general) and 3, and give some evidence for our conjecture that we have found the generating system of the ideal of relations. The approach is through the representation theory of the general linear group.
The variety of principal minors of $n\times n$ symmetric matrices, denoted $Z_{n}$, is invariant under the action of a group $G\subset \GL(2^{n})$ isomorphic to $\G$. We describe an irreducible $G$-module of degree $4$ polynomials constructed from Cayley's $2 \times 2 \times 2$ hyperdeterminant and show that it cuts out $Z_{n}$ set-theoretically. This solves the set-theoretic version of a conjecture of Holtz and Sturmfels. Standard techniques from representation theory and geometry are explored and developed for the proof of the conjecture and may be of use for studying similar $G$-varieties.
We introduce the concept of multiplication matrices for ideals of projective dimension zero. We discuss various applications and in particular, we give a new algorithm to compute the variety of an ideal of projective dimension zero.
An Artinian ideal $I$ of $k[x,y]$ has many Hilbert-Burch matrices. We show that there is a canonical choice. As an application, we determine the dimension of certain affine Gröbner cells and their Betti strata recovering results of Ellingsrud and Strømme, Göttsche and Iarrobino.
In arXiv:math/0405373 , Eisenbud, Huneke and Ulrich conjectured a result on the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of the embedding of a projective space $\mathbb{P}^{n-1}\hookrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{r-1}$ determined by generators of a linearly presented $\mathfrak{m}$-primary ideal. This result implies in particular that the image is scheme defined by equations of degree at most $n$. In this text we prove that the ideal of maximal minors of the Jacobian dual matrix associated to the input ideal defines the image as a scheme; it is generated in degree $n$. Showing that this ideal has a linear resol…
For positive integers m >= n >= p, we compute the GL_m x GL_n-equivariant description of the local cohomology modules of the polynomial ring S of functions on the space of m x n matrices, with support in the ideal of p x p minors. Our techniques allow us to explicitly compute all the modules Ext_S(S/I_x,S), for x a partition and I_x the ideal generated by the irreducible sub-representation of S indexed by x. In particular we determine the regularity of the ideals I_x, and we deduce that the only ones admitting a linear free resolution are the powers of the ideal of maximal minors of the generi…
We introduce the concept of s-Hankel hypermatrix, which generalizes both Hankel matrices and generic hypermatrices. We study two determinantal ideals associated to an s-Hankel hypermatrix: the ideal I<s,t> generated by certain 2 x 2 slice minors, and the ideal \tilde{I}<s,t> generated by certain 2 x 2 generalized minors. We describe the structure of these two ideals, with particular attention to the primary decomposition of I<s,t>, and provide the explicit list of minimal primes for large values of s. Finally we give some geometrical interpretations and generalise a theorem of Watanabe.
The goal of this paper is to study irreducible families W(b;a) of codimension 4, arithmetically Gorenstein schemes X of P^n defined by the submaximal minors of a t x t matrix A with entries homogeneous forms of degree a_j-b_i. Under some numerical assumption on a_j and b_i we prove that the closure of W(b;a) is an irreducible component of Hilb^{p(x)}(P^n), we show that Hilb^{p(x)}(P^n) is generically smooth along W(b;a) and we compute the dimension of W(b;a) in terms of a_j and b_i. To achieve these results we first prove that X is determined by a regular section of the twisted conormal sheaf …
We study the defining equations of projective embeddings of the blowup of P^2 at a set of {d+1 \choose 2} number of points in generic position. To do this, we first generalize the notion of a matrix, its ideal of 2x2 minors to that of a box-shaped matrix. Our work completes previous works of Geramita and Gimigliano.
The algebra of quantum matrices of a given size supports a rational torus action by automorphisms. It follows from work of Letzter and the first named author that to understand the prime and primitive spectra of this algebra, the first step is to understand the prime ideals that are invariant under the torus action. In this paper, we prove that a family of quantum minors is the set of all quantum minors that belong to a given torus-invariant prime ideal of a quantum matrix algebra if and only if the corresponding family of minors defines a non-empty totally nonnegative cell in the space of tot…
We determine the Bernstein-Sato polynomials for the ideal of maximal minors of a generic m x n matrix, as well as for that of sub-maximal Pfaffians of a generic skew-symmetric matrix of odd size. As a corollary, we obtain that the Strong Monodromy Conjecture holds in these two cases.
Sets of zero-dimensional ideals in the polynomial ring $k[x,y]$ that share the same leading term ideal with respect to a given term ordering are known to be affine spaces called Gröbner cells. Conca-Valla and Constantinescu parametrize such Gröbner cells in terms of certain canonical Hilbert-Burch matrices for the lexicographical and degree-lexicographical term orderings, respectively. In this paper, we give a parametrization of $(x,y)$-primary ideals in Gröbner cells which is compatible with the local structure of such ideals. More precisely, we extend previous results to the local setting by…
We describe explicitly the admissible families of minors for the totally nonnegative cells of real matrices, that is, the families of minors that produce nonempty cells in the cell decompositions of spaces of totally nonnegative matrices introduced by A. Postnikov. In order to do this, we relate the totally nonnegative cells to torus orbits of symplectic leaves of the Poisson varieties of complex matrices. In particular, we describe the minors that vanish on a torus orbit of symplectic leaves, we prove that such families of minors are exactly the admissible families, and we show that the nonem…
