Bresinsky defined a class of monomial curves in A 4 with the property that the minimal number of generators or the first Betti number of the defining ideal is unbounded above. We prove that the same behaviour of unboundedness is true for all the Betti numbers and construct an explicit minimal free resolution for the defining ideal of this class of curves.
BRESINSKY'S EXAMPLESLet r ≥ 3 and n 1 , . . . , n r be positive integers with gcd(n 1 , . . . , n r ) = 1. Let us assume that the numbers n 1 , . . . , n r generate the numerical semigroupminimally, that is if n i = r j=1 z j n j for some non-negative integers z j , then z j = 0 for all j = i and zwhere k is a field. Let p(n 1 , . . . , n r ) = ker(η). Let β i (p(n 1 , . . . , n r )) denote the i-th Betti number of the ideal p(n 1 , . . . , n r ). Therefore, β 1 (p(n 1 , . . . , n r )) denotes the minimal number of generators p(n 1 , . . . , n r ). For a given r ≥ 3, let β i (r) = sup(β i (p(n 1 , . . . , n r ))), where sup is taken over all the sequences of positive integers n 1 , . . . , n r . Herzog [8] proved that β 1 (3) is 3 and it follows easily that β 2 (3) is a finite integer as well. Bresinsky inextensively studied relations among the generators n 1 , . . . , n r of the numerical semigroup defined by these integers. It was proved in [2] and [3] respectively that, for r = 4 and for certain cases in r = 5, the symmetry condition on the semigroup generated by n 1 , . . . , n r imposes an upper bound on the first Betti number β 1 (p(n 1 , . . . , n r )). This remains an open question in general whether symmetry condition on the numerical semigroup generated by n 1 , . . . , n r imposes an upper bound on β 1 (p(n 1 , . . . , n r )). Bresinsky [1] 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 13C40, 13P10.