The Complete Intersection property for binomial ideals of collections of cells

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a combinatorial characterization of those collections of cells whose inner $2$-minor ideals are complete intersections. More precisely, given a collection of cells $\mathcal C$ and its associated inner $2$-minor ideal $I_{\mathcal C}$, we prove that $I_{\mathcal C}$ is a complete intersection if and only if $\mathcal C$ is a chessboard.