Generic initial ideals and fibre products

Abstract

We study the behavior of generic initial ideals with respect to fibre products. In our main result we determine the generic initial ideal of the fibre product with respect to the reverse lexicographic order. As an application we compute the symmetric algebraic shifted complex of two disjoint simplicial complexes as was conjectured by Kalai. This result is the symmetric analogue of a theorem of Nevo who determined the exterior algebraic shifted complex of two disjoint simplicial complexes as predicted by Kalai.