Perazzo 3-folds and the weak Lefschetz property

Abstract

We deal with Perazzo 3-folds in $\mathbb P^4$, i.e. hypersurfaces $X=V(f)\subset \mathbb P^4$ of degree $d$ defined by a homogeneous polynomial $f(x_0,x_1,x_2,u,v)=p_0(u,v)x_0+p_1(u,v)x_1+p_2(u,v)x_2+g(u,v)$, where $p_0,p_1,p_2$ are algebraically dependent but linearly independent forms of degree $d-1$ in $u,v$, and $g$ is a form in $u,v$ of degree $d$. Perazzo 3-folds have vanishing hessian and, hence, the associated graded artinian Gorenstein algebra $A_f$ fails the strong Lefschetz property. In this paper, we determine the maximum and minimum Hilbert function of $A_f$ and we prove that if $A_f$ has maximal Hilbert function it fails the weak Lefschetz property, while it satisfies the weak Lefschetz property when it has minimum Hilbert function. In addition, we classify all Perazzo 3-folds in $\mathbb P^4$ such that $A_f$ has minimum Hilbert function.