Unimodal Gorenstein h-vectors without the Stanley-Iarrobino property

The study of the $h$-vectors of graded Gorenstein algebras is an important topic in combinatorial commutative algebra, which despite the large amount of literature produced during the last several years, still presents many interesting open questions. In this note, we commence a study of those unimodal Gorenstein $h$-vectors that do \emph{not} satisfy the Stanley-Iarrobino property. Our main results, which are characteristic free, show that such $h$-vectors exist: 1) In socle degree $e$ if and only if $e\ge 6$; and 2) In every codimension five or greater. The main case that remains open is that of codimension four, where no Gorenstein $h$-vector is known without the Stanley-Iarrobino property. We conclude by proposing the following very general conjecture: The existence of any arbitrary level $h$-vector is \emph{independent} of the characteristic of the base field.Comment: A few minor revisions. Final version to appear in Comm. Algebr

Gorenstein algebras presented by quadrics

We establish restrictions on the Hilbert function of standard graded Gorenstein algebras with only quadratic relations. Furthermore, we pose some intriguing conjectures and provide evidence for them by proving them in some cases using a number of different techniques, including liaison theory and generic initial ideals

Stanley's nonunimodal Gorenstein h-vector is optimal

We classify all possible $h$-vectors of graded artinian Gorenstein algebras in socle degree 4 and codimension $\leq 17$, and in socle degree 5 and codimension $\leq 25$. We obtain as a consequence that the least number of variables allowing the existence of a nonunimodal Gorenstein $h$-vector is 13 for socle degree 4, and 17 for socle degree 5. In particular, the smallest nonunimodal Gorenstein $h$-vector is $(1,13,12,13,1)$, which was constructed by Stanley in his 1978 seminal paper on level algebras. This solves a long-standing open question in this area. All of our results are characteristic free.Comment: 9 page