Resolutions of Monomial Ideals of Projective Dimension 1

Abstract

We show that a monomial ideal $I$ has projective dimension $\leq$ 1 if and only if the minimal free resolution of $S/I$ is supported on a graph that is a tree. This is done by constructing specific graphs which support the resolution of the $S/I$. We also provide a new characterization of quasi-trees, which we use to give a new proof to a result by Herzog, Hibi, and Zheng which characterizes monomial ideals of projective dimension 1 in terms of quasi-trees.