On the structure of $S_2$-ifications of complete local rings

Abstract

Motivated by work of Hochster and Huneke, we investigate several constructions related to the $S_2$-ification $T$ of a complete equidimensional local ring $R$: the canonical module, the top local cohomology module, topological spaces of the form $Spec (R)-V(J)$, and the (finite simple) graph $\Gamma _R$ with vertex set $Min (R)$ defined by Hochster and Huneke. We generalize one of their results by showing, e.g., that the number of connected components of $\Gamma _R$ is equal to the maximum number of connected components of $Spec (R)-V(J)$ for all $J$ of height $2$. We further investigate this graph by exhibiting a technique for showing that certain graphs $G$ can be realized in the form $\Gamma _R$.