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Abstract

We investigate an invariant, called the Serre depth, from the perspective of combinatorial commutative algebra. In this paper, we establish several properties of an analogue of the depth of Stanley--Reisner rings. In particular, we relate the Serre depth both to the minimal free resolution of a Stanley--Reisner ring and to that of its Alexander dual. Also, we establish an analogue of a known result that describes the depth of Stanley--Reisner rings in terms of skeletons. Moreover, we study the Serre depth for $(S_{2})$ and the depth on the symbolic powers of Stanley--Reisner ideals. It had been an open question whether the depth of the symbolic powers of Stanley--Reisner ideals satisfies a non-increasing property, but Nguyen and Trung provided a negative answer. We construct an example that the Serre depth for $(S_{2})$ and the depth do not satisfy this property and its second symbolic power is Cohen--Macaulay. Moreover, we prove that the sequence of the Serre depth for $(S_{2})$ on the symbolic powers is convergent and that its limit coincides with the minimum value. Finally, we study the Serre depth on edge and cover ideals. Whether the depth on symbolic powers of edge ideals satisfies a non-increasing property has remained an open question. We address a related problem and show that the Serre depth for $(S_{2})$ on edge ideals of any well-covered graph satisfies a non-increasing property. In addition, we prove that the Serre depth for $(S_{2})$ on the cover ideals of any graph also satisfies a non-increasing property. Moreover, we determine the Serre depth on edge ideals of very well-covered graphs.