Square-free Groebner degenerations

Abstract

Let I be a homogeneous ideal of a polynomial ring S. We prove that if the initial ideal J of I, w.r.t. a term order on S, is square-free, then the extremal Betti numbers of S/I and of S/J coincide. In particular, depth(S/I)=depth(S/J) and reg(S/I)=reg(S/J).

Minor changes throughout. A compressed version of the paper will appear in Inventions Mathematicae