Cohen-Macaulay Binomial edge ideals in terms of blocks with whiskers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Cohen-Macaulay property of binomial edge ideals in graphs, focusing on blocks with whiskers, and provides classifications and new graph classes with this property.

Contribution

It introduces a focus on blocks with whiskers for Cohen-Macaulay characterization and classifies graphs with this property, including new graph classes like strongly r-cut-connected graphs.

Findings

Accessible and strongly unmixed properties depend only on blocks with whiskers.

Provides an infinite class of graphs with Cohen-Macaulay binomial edge ideals.

Classifies r-regular r-connected graphs with Cohen-Macaulay ideals after attaching whiskers.

Abstract

For a graph $G$, Bolognini et al. have shown $J_{G}$ is strongly unmixed $\Rightarrow$ $J_{G}$ is Cohen-Macaulay $\Rightarrow$ $G$ is accessible, where $J_{G}$ denotes the binomial edge ideals of $G$. Accessible and strongly unmixed properties are purely combinatorial. We give some motivations to focus only on blocks with whiskers for the characterization of all $G$ with Cohen-Macaulay $J_{G}$. We show that accessible and strongly unmixed properties of $G$ depend only on the corresponding properties of its blocks with whiskers and vice versa. Also, we give an infinite class of graphs whose binomial edge ideals are Cohen-Macaulay, and from that, we classify all $r$-regular $r$-connected graphs such that attaching some special whiskers to it, the binomial edge ideals become Cohen-Macaulay. Finally, we define a new class of graphs, called \textit{strongly $r$-cut-connected} and prove that the binomial edge ideal of any strongly $r$-cut-connected accessible graph having at most three cut vertices is Cohen-Macaulay.