Cohen-Macaulay binomial edge ideals of small graphs

Abstract

A combinatorial property that characterizes Cohen-Macaulay binomial edge ideals has long been elusive. A recent conjecture ties the Cohen-Macaulayness of a binomial edge ideal JG to special disconnecting sets of vertices of its underlying graph G, called cut sets. More precisely, the conjecture states that JG is Cohen-Macaulay if and only if JG is unmixed and the collection of the cut sets of G is an accessible set system. In this paper we prove the conjecture theoretically for all graphs with up to 12 vertices and develop an algorithm that allows to computationally check the conjecture for all graphs with up to 15 vertices and all blocks with whiskers where the block has at most 11 vertices. This significantly extends previous computational results.