Commutative algebra, combinatorics, and algebraic geometry are thriving areas of mathematical research with a rich history of interaction. Connections Between Algebra and Geometry contains lecture notes, along with exercises and solutions, from the Workshop on Connections Between Algebra and Geometry held at the University of Regina from May 29-June 1, 2012. It also contains research and survey papers from academics invited to participate in the companion Special Session on Interactions Between Algebraic Geometry and Commutative Algebra, which was part of the CMS Summer Meeting at the University of Regina held June 2–3, 2012, and the meeting Further Connections Between Algebra and Geometry, which was held at the North Dakota State University February 23, 2013. This volume highlights three mini-courses in the areas of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry: differential graded commutative algebra, secant varieties, and fat points and symbolic powers. It will serve as a useful resource for graduate students and researchers who wish to expand their knowledge of commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, combinatorics, and the intricacies of their intersection.

This book describes the interaction of commutative algebra with other areas of mathematics, including algebraic geometry, group cohomology, and combinatorics.

This is the first of two volumes of a state-of-the-art survey article collection which originates from three commutative algebra sessions at the 2009 Fall Southeastern American Mathematical Society Meeting at Florida Atlantic University. The articles reach into diverse areas of commutative algebra and build a bridge between Noetherian and non-Noetherian commutative algebra. These volumes present current trends in two of the most active areas of commutative algebra: non-noetherian rings (factorization, ideal theory, integrality), and noetherian rings (the local theory, graded situation, and interactions with combinatorics and geometry). This volume contains combinatorial and homological surveys. The combinatorial papers document some of the increasing focus in commutative algebra recently on the interaction between algebra and combinatorics. Specifically, one can use combinatorial techniques to investigate resolutions and other algebraic structures as with the papers of Fløystad on Boij-Söderburg theory, of Geramita, Harbourne and Migliore, and of Cooper on Hilbert functions, of Clark on minimal poset resolutions and of Mermin on simplicial resolutions. One can also utilize algebraic invariants to understand combinatorial structures like graphs, hypergraphs, and simplicial complexes such as in the paper of Morey and Villarreal on edge ideals. Homological techniques have become indispensable tools for the study of noetherian rings. These ideas have yielded amazing levels of interaction with other fields like algebraic topology (via differential graded techniques as well as the foundations of homological algebra), analysis (via the study of D-modules), and combinatorics (as described in the previous paragraph). The homological articles the editors have included in this volume relate mostly to how homological techniques help us better understand rings and singularities both noetherian and non-noetherian such as in the papers by Roberts, Yao, Hummel and Leuschke.

This book presents four lectures on recent research in commutative algebra and its applications to algebraic geometry. Aimed at researchers and graduate students with an advanced background in algebra, these lectures were given during the Commutative Algebra program held at the Vietnam Institute of Advanced Study in Mathematics in the winter semester 2013 -2014. The first lecture is on Weyl algebras (certain rings of differential operators) and their D-modules, relating non-commutative and commutative algebra to algebraic geometry and analysis in a very appealing way. The second lecture concerns local systems, their homological origin, and applications to the classification of Artinian Gorenstein rings and the computation of their invariants. The third lecture is on the representation type of projective varieties and the classification of arithmetically Cohen -Macaulay bundles and Ulrich bundles. Related topics such as moduli spaces of sheaves, liaison theory, minimal resolutions, and Hilbert schemes of points are also covered. The last lecture addresses a classical problem: how many equations are needed to define an algebraic variety set-theoretically? It systematically covers (and improves) recent results for the case of toric varieties.

The central theme of this volume is commutative algebra, with emphasis on special graded algebras, which are increasingly of interest in problems of algebraic geometry, combinatorics and computer algebra. Most of the papers have partly survey character, but are research-oriented, aiming at classification and structural results.

This book surveys fundamental current topics in these two areas of research, emphasising the lively interaction between them. Volume 2 focuses on the most recent research.