Failure of the Lefschetz property for the Graphic Matroid

Abstract

We consider the strong Lefschetz property for standard graded Artinian Gorenstein algebras. Such an algebra has a presentation of the quotient algebra of the ring of the differential polynomials modulo the annihilator of some homogeneous polynomial. There is a characterization of the strong Lefschetz property for such an algebra by the non-degeneracy of the higher Hessian matrix of the homogeneous polynomial. Maeno and Numata conjectured that if such an algebra is defined by the basis generating polynomial of any matroid, then it has the strong Lefschetz property. For this conjecture, we give counterexamples that are associated with graphic matroids. We prove the degeneracy of the higher Hessian matrix by constructing a non-zero element in the kernel of that matrix.