Symbolic powers of monomial ideals which are generically complete intersections

Abstract

We classify all unmixed monomial ideals I of codimension 2 which are generically a complete intersection and which have the property that the symbolic power algebra A(I) is standard graded. We give a lower bound for the highest degree of a generator of A(I) in the case that I is a modification of the vertex cover ideal of a bipartite graph, and show that this highest degree can be any given number. We furthermore give an upper bound for the highest degree of a generator of the integral closure of A(I) in the case that I is a monomial ideal which is generically a complete intersection.