Given a nontrivial homogeneous ideal [Formula: see text], a problem of great recent interest has been the comparison of the [Formula: see text]th ordinary power of [Formula: see text] and the [Formula: see text]th symbolic power [Formula: see text]. This comparison has been undertaken directly via an exploration of which exponents [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] guarantee the subset containment [Formula: see text] and asymptotically via a computation of the resurgence [Formula: see text], a number for which any [Formula: see text] guarantees [Formula: see text]. Recently, a third quantity, the symbolic defect, was introduced; as [Formula: see text], the symbolic defect is the minimal number of generators required to add to [Formula: see text] in order to get [Formula: see text]. We consider these various means of comparison when [Formula: see text] is the edge ideal of certain graphs by describing an ideal [Formula: see text] for which [Formula: see text]. When [Formula: see text] is the edge ideal of an odd cycle, our description of the structure of [Formula: see text] yields solutions to both the direct and asymptotic containment questions, as well as a partial computation of the sequence of symbolic defects.
A proof for a conjecture on the regularity of binomial edge ideals
