Distractions of Shakin rings

We study, by means of embeddings of Hilbert functions, a class of rings which we call Shakin rings, i.e. quotients K[X_1,...,X_n]/a of a polynomial ring over a field K by ideals a=L+P which are the sum of a piecewise lex-segment ideal L, as defined by Shakin, and a pure powers ideal P. Our main results extend Abedelfatah's recent work on the Eisenbud-Green-Harris conjecture, Shakin's generalization of Macaulay and Bigatti-Hulett-Pardue theorems on Betti numbers and, when char(K)=0, Mermin-Murai theorem on the Lex-Plus-Power inequality, from monomial regular sequences to a larger class of ideals. We also prove an extremality property of embeddings induced by distractions in terms of Hilbert functions of local cohomology modules.Comment: 12 page

Generic circuits sets and general initial ideals with respect to weights

We study the set of circuits of a homogeneous ideal and that of its truncations, and introduce the notion of generic circuits set. We show how this is a well-defined invariant that can be used, in the case of initial ideals with respect to weights, as a counterpart of the (usual) generic initial ideal with respect to monomial orders. As an application we recover the existence of the generic fan introduced by R\"omer and Schmitz for studying generic tropical varieties. We also consider general initial ideals with respect to weights and show, in analogy to the fact that generic initial ideals are Borel-fixed, that these are fixed under the action of certain Borel subgroups of the general linear group.Comment: 10 page

The lex-plus-power inequality for local cohomology modules

We prove an inequality between Hilbert functions of local cohomology modules supported in the homogeneous maximal ideal of standard graded algebras over a field, within the framework of embeddings of posets of Hilbert functions. As a main application, we prove an analogue for local cohomology of Evans' Lex-Plus-Power Conjecture for Betti numbers. This results implies some cases of the classical Lex-Plus-Power Conjecture, namely an inequality between extremal Betti numbers. In particular, for the classes of ideals for which the Eisenbud-Green-Harris Conjecture is currently known, the projective dimension and the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of a graded ideal do not decrease by passing to the corresponding Lex-Plus-Power ideal.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur

The synchrotron foreground and CMB temperature-polarization cross correlation power spectrum from the first year WMAP data

We analyse the temperature-polarization cross-correlation in the Galactic synchrotron template that we have recently developed, and between the template and CMB temperature maps derived from WMAP data. Since the polarized synchrotron template itself uses WMAP data, we can estimate residual synchrotron contamination in the CMB $C_\ell^{TE}$ angular spectrum. While $C_2^{TE}$ appears to be contamined by synchrotron, no evidence for contamination is found in the multipole range which is most relevant for the fit of the cosmological optical depth.Comment: Accepted for pubblication on MNRAS Lette

Ideals with maximal local cohomology modules

This paper finds its motivation in the pursuit of ideals whose local cohomology modules have maximal Hilbert functions. A characterization of the class of such ideals is accomplished