Complementary edge ideals

Abstract

Let $S=K[x_1,\dots,x_n]$ be the polynomial ring over a field $K$ and $I\subset S$ be a squarefree monomial ideal generated in degree $n-2$. Motivated by the remarkable behavior of the powers of $I$ when $I$ admits a linear resolution, as established in [11], in this work we investigate the algebraic and homological properties of $I$ and its powers. To this end, we introduce the complementary edge ideal of a finite simple graph $G$ as the ideal $$I_c(G)=((x_1\cdots x_n)/(x_ix_j):\{i,j\}\in E(G)) $$ of $S$, where $V(G)=\{1,\ldots,n\}$ and $E(G)$ is the edge set of $G$. By interpreting any squarefree monomial ideal $I$ generated in degree $n-2$ as the complementary edge ideal of a graph $G$, we establish a correspondence between algebraic invariants of $I$ and combinatorial properties of $G$. More precisely, we characterize sequentially Cohen-Macaulay, Cohen-Macaulay, Gorenstein, nearly Gorenstein and matroidal complementary edge ideals. Moreover, we determine the regularity of powers of $I$ in terms of combinatorial invariants of the graph $G$ and obtain that $I^k$ has linear resolution or linear quotients for some $k$ (equivalently for all $k\geq 1$) if and only if $G$ has only one connected component with at least two vertices.