Ideals generated by 2-minors: binomial edge ideals and polyomino ideals

Since the early 1990s, a classical object in commutative algebra has been the study of binomial ideals. A widely-investigated class of binomial ideals is the one containing those generated by a subset of 2-minors of an (m x n)-matrix of indeterminates. This thesis is devoted to illustrate some algebraic and homological properties of two classes of ideals of 2-minors: binomial edge ideals and polyomino ideals. Binomial edge ideals arise from finite graphs and their appeal results from the fact that their homological properties reflect nicely the combinatorics of the underlying graph. First, we focus on the binomial edge ideals of block graphs. We give a lower bound for their Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity by computing the two distinguished extremal Betti numbers of a new family of block graphs, called flower graphs. Moreover, we present a linear time algorithm to compute Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and Krull dimension of binomial edge ideals of block graphs. Secondly, we consider some classes of Cohen-Macaulay binomial edge ideals. We provide the regularity and the Cohen-Macaulay type of binomial edge ideals of Cohen-Macaulay cones, and we show the extremal Betti numbers of Cohen-Macaulay bipartite and fan graphs. In addition, we compute the Hilbert-Poincaré series of the binomial edge ideals of some Cohen-Macaulay bipartite graphs. Polyomino ideals arise from polyominoes, plane figures formed by joining one or more equal squares edge to edge. It is known that the polyomino ideal of simple polyominoes is prime. We consider multiply connected polyominoes, namely polyominoes with holes, and observe that the non-existence of a certain sequence of inner intervals of the polyomino, called zig-zag walk, gives a necessary condition for the primality of the polyomino ideal. Moreover, by computational approach, we prove that for all polyominoes with rank less than or equal to 14 the above condition is also sufficient. Lastly, we present an infinite class of prime polyomino ideals.