Radical support for multigraded ideals

Abstract

Can one tell if an ideal is radical just by looking at the degrees of the generators? In general, this is hopeless. However, there are special collections of degrees in multigraded polynomial rings, with the property that any multigraded ideal generated by elements of those degrees is radical. We call such a collection of degrees a radical support. In this paper, we give a combinatorial characterization of radical supports. Our characterization is in terms of properties of cycles in an associated labelled graph. We also show that the notion of radical support is closely related to that of Cartwright-Sturmfels ideals. In fact, any ideal generated by multigraded generators whose multidegrees form a radical support is a Cartwright-Sturmfels ideal. Conversely, a collection of degrees such that any multigraded ideal generated by elements of those degrees is Cartwright-Sturmfels is a radical support.