The structure of almost symmetric almost complete intersection numerical semigroups
We prove a structure theorem for numerical semigroups H that are almost symmetric and almost complete intersections. We show that a row-factorization (RF) matrix of H must possess a highly regular structure, which we call a cascade matrix. Consequently, the defining ideal I_H of the semigroup ring k[H] also exhibits a highly regular structure, derived from this cascade matrix. Both the RF-matrix and the binomial minimal generating set of I_H are unique. Conversely, this structure completely characterizes almost symmetric almost complete intersection numerical semigroups: to every cascade matrix M we associate a monoid H and, whenever this is a numerical semigroup, we prove that H is pseudo-symmetric, almost complete intersection, and has M as RF-matrix. As a consequence of our study, we obtain several key results. 1) Rigidty: if an almost complete intersection semigroup is almost symmetric, then it is forced to have odd embedding dimension and to be pseudo-symmetric. This result is a ``next step'' after Kunz's theorem, which states that an almost complete intersection semigroup is never symmetric. 2) Huneke-Ulrich structure: the toric ideal can be realized as the ideal of entries of an alternating matrix multiplied by a vector of variables, and this yields the licci property. 3) Cascade polynomials: for each odd positive integer e, we construct a multivariate squarefree polynomial P_e with integer coefficients, arising from a cascade matrix of variables. We provide an enumerative interpretation of its coefficients, thereby proving their non-negativity. 4) Herzog--Watanabe question: we prove that every minimal relation of an arbitrary numerical semigroup H can be obtained by subtracting two rows in some RF-matrix of H, affirmatively answering a 2019 question by Herzog and Watanabe.