Conforti–Cornuéjols conjecture for square-free monomial ideals

Let II be a square-free monomial ideal. The packing property means that every minor of the clutter associated to II has the König property, namely, its minimum vertex-cover number equals its maximum matching number. The symbolic power I(s)I^{(s)} is defined by

I(s)=pAss(I)IsRpR.I^{(s)} = \bigcap_{\mathfrak{p} \in \operatorname{Ass}(I)} I^s R_{\mathfrak{p}} \cap R.

Conforti–Cornuéjols conjecture. All symbolic powers and ordinary powers of II coincide if and only if II has the packing property:

I(s)=Isfor every s1.I^{(s)}=I^s \quad\text{for every }s\geq 1.

This is the commutative-algebra formulation of the Conforti–Cornuéjols packing problem, relating equality of symbolic and ordinary powers to a combinatorial property of the associated clutter. The supplied text states that the conjecture is proved for the class of Alexander duals of connected ideals considered in the paper, but gives no general resolution, so its overall status is left open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Om Prakash Bhardwaj, Kanoy Kumar Das and Rutuja Sawant, “Simis and packing properties of Alexander dual of connected ideals”, arXiv:2603.18751 (2026).

Additional references

15 papers in this index state this conjecture (2005–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2510.15864, arXiv:2502.19998, arXiv:2411.14227, arXiv:1903.02872, arXiv:1809.02308, arXiv:1808.05899, arXiv:1303.6642, arXiv:1210.4753, arXiv:1012.5329, arXiv:0806.1772, arXiv:0805.3838, arXiv:0801.1478, and 2 more.

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