Cellular resolutions of powers of monomial ideals

Abstract

There are many connections between the invariants of the different powers of an ideal. We investigate how to construct minimal resolutions for all powers at once using methods from algebraic and polyhedral topology with a focus on ideals arising from combinatorics. In one construction, we obtain cellular resolutions for all powers of edge ideals of bipartite graphs on n vertices, supported by (n-2)-dimensional complexes. Our main result is an explicit minimal cellular resolution for all powers of edge ideals of paths. These cell complexes are constructed by first subdividing polyhedral complexes and then modifying them using discrete Morse theory.