Ideals of Adjacent Minors

We give a description of the minimal primes of the ideal generated by the 2 x 2 adjacent minors of a generic matrix. We also compute the complete prime decomposition of the ideal of adjacent m x m minors of an m x n generic matrix when the characteristic of the ground field is zero. A key intermediate result is the proof that the ideals which appear as minimal primes are, in fact, prime ideals. This introduces a large new class of mixed determinantal ideals that are prime

A finiteness theorem for Markov bases of hierarchical models

We show that the complexity of the Markov bases of multidimensional tables stabilizes eventually if a single table dimension is allowed to vary. In particular, if this table dimension is beyond a computable bound, the Markov bases consist of elements of Markov bases of smaller tables. We give an explicit formula for this bound in terms of Graver bases. We also compute these Markov and Graver complexities for all $K \times 2 \times 2 \times 2$ tables.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Normal Toric Ideals of Low Codimension

Every normal toric ideal of codimension two is minimally generated by a Grobner basis with squarefree initial monomials. A polynomial time algorithm is presented for checking whether a toric ideal of fixed codimension is normal