Cohen-Macaulay admissible clutters

Abstract

There is a one-to-one correspondence between square-free monomial ideals and clutters, which are also known as simple hypergraphs. It was conjectured that unmixed admissible clutters are Cohen-Macaulay. We prove the conjecture for uniform admissible clutters of heights 2 and 3. For admissible clutters of greater heights, we give a family of examples to show that the conjecture may fail. When the height is 4, we give an additional condition under which unmixed admissible clutters are Cohen-Macaulay.

13 pages, final version to appear in J. Comm. Alg