Local Gröbner fan
Rouchdi Bahloul a , Nobuki Takayama ba Institut Camille Jordan - UMR CNRS 5208 - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - 43 boulevard du 11 novembre 1918 -

69622 Villeurbanne cedex - Franceb Department of Mathematics - Faculty of Science - Kobe University - 1-1, Rokkodai, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501 - Japan

Received *****; accepted after revision +++++
Presented by +++++

Abstract
This note summarizes results concerning local Gröbner fans. Any Gröbner fan of an ideal in a power series
ring, or in an analytic or formal differential operator ring, is found to be a polyhedral fan. We also compare thenotions of global and local Gröbner fans, and discuss applications of our results. To cite this article: R. Bahloul,
N. Takayama, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 340 (2005).
RésuméÉventail de Gröbner local. Cette note résume des résultats portant sur l’éventail de Gröbner local. Nous
montrons que l’éventail de Gröbner associé à un idéal d’un anneau de séries ou de l’anneau des opérateurs
différentiels formels ou analytiques est un éventail polyédral. Nous comparons également les notions d’éventail
de Gröbner global et local et discutons des applications de nos résultats. Pour citer cet article : R. Bahloul, N.
Takayama, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 340 (2005).

Version française abrégée
Le but de cette note est d’exposer des résultats portant sur l’éventail de Gröbner local. Les démonstrations
se trouvent dans [5].
Étant donné un idéal polynomial I ⊂ k[x] = k[x1 , . . . , xn ] (k étant un corps de caractéristique nulle),
Mora et Robbiano [10] ont introduit l’éventail de Gröbner. Il s’agit, étant donné un système de poidsu ∈ Rn sur les variables xi de considérer l’ensemble CI [u] des poids u0 pour lesquels l’idéal initial inu0 (I)égale inu (I). L’ensemble des CI [u] est l’éventail de Gröbner de I, que l’on qualifie d’ouvert ici et qu’on
Email addresses: bahloul@math.univ-lyon1.fr (Rouchdi Bahloul), takayama@math.kobe-u.ac.jp (Nobuki Takayama).
Preprint submitted to Elsevier Science

15 novembre 2006

note E(I). En effet, l’ensemble des adhérences des CI [u] noté Ē(I) s’appelle l’éventail de Gröbner fermé.
Quand I est homogène, Sturmfels [12] a montré que ce dernier est un éventail polyédral (cf. Def. 0.1).
Dans le cas d’un idéal de k[[x]] (ou C{x}) on peut faire une construction analogue mais où les systèmesde poids u doivent être dans Rn≤0 pour que les choses aient un sens (en effet, le poids d’une série est définiecomme le maximum des poids des monômes qui la composent). On peut alors montrer que l’éventail deGröbner est un éventail polyédral. Nous montrons ce même résultat pour un idéal de l’anneau (homogénéisé) des opérateurs différentiels formels (ou analytiques). Dans ce cas, les poids portent sur les
xi et les dérivées partielles avec des conditions de compatibilité. Ce dernier résultat complète ceux deAssi et al. [3] (où ils montrent seulement que l’éventail de Gröbner ouvert est une ensemble fini de cônes
polyédraux rationels convexes). Mentionnons en passant que Saito et al. [11] ont fait de même dans le casalgébrique en complétant les résultats de Assi et al. [2]. Ces résultats sont rappelés dans la section 1 dela version anglaise.
Étant donné un idéal I du localisé (en 0 par exemple) k[x]0 de k[x], on peut montrer que l’éventail
de Gröbner coı̈ncide avec celui de l’extension formelle k[[x]]I de I. Si I est polynomial, on définit alorsl’éventail de Gröbner local de I comme celui associé à k[x]0 I. Il existe des liens entre l’éventail de Gröbner
global et local. Par exemple, si I est homogène, ils sont égaux modulo la stratification par les gradués dek[[x]]. Sinon, on peut donner un exemple pour lequel cela n’a pas lieu. Ceci est présenté dans la section
2 de la version anglaise.
Dans la dernière section, on explique l’intérêt des résultats ci-dessus et évoque des applications. Ainsi on
propose un algorithme de calcul de l’éventail de Gröbner local en se basant sur le fait qu’il soit polyédral.
En effet, un éventail polyédral est entièrement défini par ses cônes maximaux ce qui réduit sensiblement
la phase d’énumération des cônes. On évoque aussi l’application aux polynômes de Bernstein-Sato suivant[4] et celle par N. Touda à la notion de variété tropicale locale, cf [13].

Introduction
The goal of this note is to summarize a number of new results on local Gröbner fans. A more detailed
and technical consideration of this work may be found in [5]. This paper deals with the notion of aGröbner fan associated with an ideal in the ring of (convergent or formal) power series; or an ideal in thering of differential operators with coefficients in a power series ring.
Roughly speaking, the Gröbner fan is a collection of polyhedral cones in the space of weight vectors, andeach cone corresponds to a graded (or initial) ideal. A little more precisely, each cone is the equivalenceclass of weight vectors and two weight vectors belong to the same class if the corresponding initial ideals
coincide.
Basically there are two contributions:(1) We state that given an ideal in a power series ring or in a ring of (analytic of formal) differential
operators, the Gröbner fan is a polyhedral fan (see Def. 0.1). These results are improvements of theresult by Assi, Castro, Granger [3], who proved that such an ideal is a finite collection of polyhedralcones without proving that it is a polyhedral complex. This polyhedral property is essential for an
efficient construction of the fan, and also for some applications such as local tropical varieties.
(2) We compare the notions of local and global Gröbner fans. Moreover, given a polynomial ideal or a left
ideal in Weyl algebra, we propose an algorithm for computing its local Gröbner fan; that is the Gröbner
fan of its formal extension.
The notion of a Gröbner fan for a polynomial ideal was introduced by Mora and Robbiano (see [10]) andrevisited by Sturmfels in [12]. Let us first give some definitions: Let I be an ideal in k[x] = k[x1 , . . . , xn ],where k denotes a field (and all fields considered here are of characteristic 0). For a non-zero polynomial
2

P
αn
n
1
f = α cα xα ∈ k[x] (with α ∈ Nn , cα ∈ k, xα = xα
1 · · · xn ), the support is supp(f ) = {α ∈ N |cα 6= 0}.
n
We denote a weight vector on the variables xi by an element u ∈ R , and the space of such elements
u is denoted by Uglob . With u ∈ Uglob , we associateof k[x]:Pn a weight order on the non-zero elementsuordu (f ) = max{u · α|α ∈ supp(f )} (here u · α = 1 ui αi ). This gives rise to a filtration F≤λ(k[x]) =uu{f |ordu (f ) ≤ λ}, where λ is a real number, and to a graded ring ⊕λ F≤λ(k[x])/F<λ(k[x]) (the notationuu
F<λ is natural). Notice that gr (k[x]) = k[x].
Given an ideal I in k[x], there is an induced filtration and an induced graded (or initial) ideal inu (I) ⊂gru (k[x]).P(Notice that inu (I) is generated by all the initial forms inu (f ), when f runs over I. Hereinu (f ) = u·α=ordu (f ) cα xα .) This enables us to consider an equivalence relation on Uglob : u ∼ u0 if andonly if inu (I) = inu0 (I). Let us denote by CI [u] the equivalence class of some u ∈ Uglob . We call the setof closures (in Euclidean topology) of all distinct CI [u], u ∈ I, the closed Gröbner fan of I, and we shalldenote it by Ē(I, Uglob ) or simply Ē(I). The Gröbner fan of I in k[x] is also called a global Gröbner fan
to distinguish it from the concept of a local Gröbner fan, which will be defined later in this paper.
Let us give some comments here. It is known (see Sturmfels [12]) that if I is homogeneous (for the total
degree) then Ē(I) is a polyhedral fan.
Definition 0.1 A polyhedral fan is a finite collection of (relatively closed) polyhedral cones satisfying:– Any face of any cone is again a cone.
– The intersection of any two cones is a face of both.
However, it is not true in general that Ē(I) is a polyhedral fan. The following example is well known.
Example 1 Let I be the ideal of k[x1 , x2 ] generated by {1 + x1 , 1 + x2 }. It is then easy to check that
Ē(I) = {{0}, R2 r (R>0 e1 + R>0 e2 ), R≥0 e1 , R≥0 e2 , R≥0 e1 + R≥0 e2 } where e1 = (1, 0) and e2 = (0, 1). In
this list, the second “cone” is not convex.
By an abuse of notation, the set E(I) := {CI [u]|u ∈ Uglob } is called the open Gröbner fan, even though
it is not a polyhedral fan.
Chronologically, the Gröbner fan was first defined for polynomial ideals and then for ideals in Weyl
algebra (the ring of differential operators with polynomial coefficients), see Assi, Castro and Granger [2].
It was revisited independently by Saito, Sturmfels and Takayama [11]. Meanwhile, the preprint [1] by
Assi treated the case of formal power series. The analytic (and formal) differential case was subsequently
treated by Assi et al. [3].
What is the contribution of our paper with respect to these works? In the remainder of this introduction
we discuss what the present study adds to this subject area.
Mora and Robbiano [10] proved (for the polynomial case) that given a homogeneous ideal, the openGröbner fan is made up of a finite number of open convex polyhedral rational cones, but they did notprove that the closed Gröbner fan is polyhedral. This last fact was proved by Sturmfels [12]. Concerning
the differential case, the definitions are analogous, except that the set of weight vectors Wglob (or Wloc )is a subset of R2n due to the non-commutativeness of the ring. In order to have interesting and useful
results we need homogeneity (as in the polynomial case), which is why we usually introduce an extra
variable h and, for the case of Weyl algebra, assume the ideal to be homogeneous with respect to thewhole set of variables xi , ∂i , h, where ∂i is the partial differential operator with respect to xi . For the
analytic or formal case we assume the ideal to be homogeneous with respect to ∂i , h.
For the global case (the homogenized Weyl algebra), Assi et al. [2] proved similar results to those of Moraand Robbiano [10] concerning the open Gröbner fan. Note that they called it a Gröbner fan. In [11], Saito
et al. independently showed that the closed Gröbner fan is a polyhedral fan. In Assi et al. [3], again, theauthors proved similar results for the open Gröbner fan in the analytic and formal differential situation.
The same result was presented in the preprint by Assi [1] for power series rings.
Note finally that in the recent preprint by Jensen, it is proved that Gröbner fans are generally notnormal fans of convex polyhedra (see [8])3In this note, we will present the result that the closed Gröbner fan is a polyhedral fan in the analytic
and formal commutative and differential case.

1. Local Gröbner fan is a polyhedral fan
Figure 1.
Here we describe the two main results of the first part of [5].
Commutative caseu
For simplicity, we consider the formal version only. Let I be an ideal inuk[[x]] = k[[x1 , . . . , xn ]]. Define Uloc = {u ∈ Rn |ui ≤ 0,P∀i = 1, . . . , n} asαin (x-y)=x
the space of local weight vectors. For a non-zero f = α cα x ∈ k[[x]],unthe support is supp(f ) := {α ∈ N |cα 6= 0}, theP u-order is ord (f ) :=maxsupp(f ) {u · α}, the initial form is inu (f ) := u·α=ordu (f ) cα xα .
in (x-y)=-yu
As in the introduction, the u-order naturally defines a filtration F u onk[[x]], and a graded ring. Notice that, in contrast to the global case,gru (k[[x]]) is not isomorphic to k[[x]].
In fact we can identify it with k[[xim+1 , . . . , xin ]][xi1 , . . . , xim ] where: ui < 0 ⇐⇒ i ∈ {i1 , . . . , im }. The
induced filtration on I gives rise to a graded ideal inu (I) ⊂ gru (k[[x]]). Notice that inu (I) is generated
by the set of inu (f ) when f runs over I.
The definition of the (open or closed) Gröbner fan is stated as follows. Two local weight vectors u and0
u0 are said to be equivalent if gru (k[[x]]) identifies to gru (k[[x]]) (in the above sense) and if inu (I) equalsinu (I). This last condition makes sense since these ideals are in the “same” ring by the first condition.
If CI [u] denotes the equivalence class of some u ∈ Uloc , the local open (resp. closed) Gröbner fan
denoted by E(I) = E(I, Uloc ) (resp. Ē(I) = Ē(I, Uloc )) is the set of all distinct CI [u] (resp. CI [u]) when uruns over Uloc .
Theorem 1.1 ([5, Th. 2.0.3]) The set Ē(I) is a rational polyhedral fan.
Similar results occur for an ideal in C{x}.
2

3

u

u

1

Example 2 The local Gröbner fan Ē(k[[x, y, z]]hx − y, 1 − zi) is the collection of all faces of the negative
orthant Q = {(u1 , u2 , u3 )|ui ≤ 0}, but Ē(k[x, y, z]hx − y, 1 − zi) ∩ Q is not a rational polyhedral fan. (seefigure 1).
Analytic or formal differential case
Let h(0,1) (D̂) be the k[[x]]-algebra generated by the ∂i ’s and a new variable h with the following nontrivial relations: [∂i , a(x)] = ∂a(x)∂xi · h, a(x) ∈ k[[x]],1 ≤ i ≤ n. This is the (0, 1)-homogenized versionof D̂ = k[[x]][∂1 , . . . , ∂n ]. Here (0, 1) means that we look at the total degree with respect to the ∂i(i.e. where the weight of the xi ’s is 0 and that of the ∂i ’s is 1). Therefore h(0,1) (D̂) is graded withrespect to the weight vector (0, 1, 1). Thus, let J be a homogeneous (or graded) ideal of h(0,1) (D̂). Put
Wloc = {w = (u, v) ∈ R2n | ui ≤ 0, ui + vi ≥ 0}. Then Wloc is the set of admissible weight vectors. To any
w ∈ Wloc , we can associate a filtration on h(0,1) (D̂) which induces one on J, and consequently a gradedring grw (h(0,1) (D̂)) and a graded (or initial) ideal inw (J). As before, we associate an equivalence relation
on Wloc by the equality of the graded rings gr• (h(0,1) (D̂)) and the initial ideals in• (J). This gives rise
to a partition of Wloc called the open Gröbner fan of J and denoted by E(J) = E(J, Wloc ). The set ofclosures of C ∈ E(J, Wloc ), denoted by Ē(J) = Ē(J, Wloc ), is called the (local) closed Gröbner fan.
Theorem 1.2 ([5, Th. 3.0.2]) The set Ē(J, Wloc ) is a rational polyhedral fan.
Note that Assi et al. [3] defined the “analytic standard fan” of a given ideal I ⊂ D0 (ring of analytic
4differential operators) as the open Gröbner fan of its homogenization h(0,1) (I) with respect to the total
degree in the ∂i ’s.
Let us end this paragraph with few words on the proof of this theorem (the proof of Th. 1.1 is similar).
We adapted Sturmfels’ [12] proof for the polynomial setting to our situation: the main steps are analogous,
but techniques for proofs are different. We stated Janet type divisions in the bi-graded ring grw (h(0,1) (D̂)),and we used the notion of standard bases.

2. General results on local and global Gröbner fans - Algorithm
Here we are concerned with the results of the second part of [5]. Let us first introduce some notation.
We denote by k[x]0 the localization at 0 of k[x], and D{0} the subring of D̂ made of differential operatorswith coefficients in k[x]0 . This subring is the localization at 0 of D, the ring of polynomial differential
operators. Moreover, for a given ideal I, e.g. in k[x], and a subset U ⊂ Uglob , E(I, U ) is the restriction to
U of E(I, Uglob ).
Let I be an ideal in k[x], we call E(k[x]0 I) = E(k[x]0 I, Uloc ) the local (open) Gröbner fan of I. Similarly,
if I is a (left) ideal in D, we call E(D{0} I) = E(D{0} I, Wloc ) the local (open) Gröbner fan of I. In fact,
we can also consider analogous constructions. Indeed, if I is generated by (0, 1)-homogeneous elements ofD, then we can consider E(h(0,1) (D{0} )I, Wloc ) and, in general, we can consider E(h(0,1) (D{0} I), Wloc ).
Here we shall recall “commutative results”, i.e. when I is an ideal in k[x], k[x]0 or Ô.
The definition above is justified by the following (see [5, Prop. 4.1.8]):• If I ⊂ k[x]0 then E(I, Uloc ) = E(ÔI, Uloc ).
0
Let us denote by Uloc
the interior of Uloc then (see [5, Cor. 4.1.6]):
00• E(I, Uloc ) = E(k[x]0 I, Uloc), if I ⊂ k[x].
0This means that global and local Gröbner fans coincide in Uloc
. So if there exists a difference between
these two concepts, it should be on the border of Uloc . The following example is trivial but gives an ideaof what may happen. Let us denote by SÔ = E(Ô1, Uloc ) the stratification of Uloc defined by the equalityof the graded rings in Ô.
• We have E(k[x]0 1) = E((1), Uloc ) ∩ SÔ (see [5, Ex. 4.1.7]).
For a general polynomial ideal I, we do not have E(k[x]0 I) = E(I, Uloc ) ∩ SÔ (see the same example inloc. cit.). However, when the ideal I is homogeneous this equality holds (see [5, Th. 5.1.1]).
Let us complete this exposition by saying that in [5] we give analogous results in the differential case(except for [5, Th. 5.1.1]), see sections 4 and 5 in loc. cit..
Algorithm
Here, we shall describe an algorithm for computing the local Gröbner fan of a polynomial ideal I. Let
L be a linear subspace of Rn . Note that since the local Gröbner fan Ē(k[x]0 I) is a polyhedral fan, therestriction of it to L is also a polyhedral fan. In most applications, we need to compute the restriction of
the local Gröbner fan Ē(k[x]0 I) ∩ L. We will present our algorithm for this problem. We have also treatedthe differential cases in [5, subsec. 5.2 & 5.4].
Let I = k[x] · {f1 , . . . , fq }. We denote by I (h) the ideal of k[x, h] generated by the homogenization (forthe total degree, or, in general, a weight-degree with positive weights) of the fi ’s. We can prove ([5, Prop.
5.1.2]) that the global Gröbner fan E(I (h) ) refines E(I) and (see [5, Rem. 4.1.10]) E(I, Uloc ) refines the
local Gröbner fan E(k[x]0 I). Thus E(I (h) , Uloc ) refines E(k[x]0 I) and we have the following algorithm (see[5, Algo. 5.1.4]):– Step 1: Compute the set E0 of maximal cones of the global Gröbner fan Ē(I (h) , Uloc ∩ L) (restricted to
Uloc ∩ L).
5

– Step 2: For each C ∈ E0 , take any u ∈ C and consider IC = inu (k[x]0 I). Glue together all the C in
E0 that have the same IC (this comparison can be done by an écart division). Thus, we obtain the
maximal cones of Ē(k[x]0 I) ∩ L from which we can reconstruct the whole fan Ē(k[x]0 I) ∩ L.

3. Interest and applications
The algorithm above is strongly dependent on the fact that the local Gröbner fan is polyhedral, because
we work with maximal dimensional cones in Uloc ∩ L.
There is another application of the result in section 1. N. Touda [13] explicitly used Th. 1.1 to study
the notion of local tropical varieties.
Moreover, our algorithmic results in the differential case enable the computation of the local BernsteinSato polynomial following the results in [4]. Let us notice that the local Bernstein-Sato polynomialconstructed in loc. cit. is a product of local b-functions associated with the 1-dimensional cones of thelocal Gröbner fan of some ideal restricted to a subspace, say V , that lies in the border of Wloc . In [5], we
computed an example where the global Gröbner fan restricted to V is trivial, but the local Gröbner fan
restricted to V is not. This result again shows that the border contains highly non-trivial information.
We also note that the Gröbner fan of analytic (or formal) differential ideals is strongly related to thenotion of slopes in D-module theory. Indeed, the set of geometric slopes along a hypersurface are containedin the set of the 1-faces of the restriction of the Gröbner fan to a 2-dimensional subspace of Wloc (see e.g.
[6, §3.5] and the references in there).
To finish, let us mention that Jensen has developed a software package called Gfan [9] (see also Fukuda
et al. [7]), which can compute the (global) Gröbner fan of a polynomial ideal. In [7], the authors proposea theory of Gröbner fans for non-homogeneous ideals, but these fans are not local.
References[1] A. Assi, Some remarks on universal standard bases, preprint, 1993.
[2] A. Assi, F.-J. Castro-Jiménez and M. Granger, The Gröbner fan of an An -module, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 150 (2000),
no. 1, 27–39.
[3] A. Assi, F.-J. Castro-Jiménez and M. Granger, The analytic standard fan of a D-module, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 164(2001), no. 1-2, 3–21.
[4] R. Bahloul, Démonstration constructive de l’existence de polynômes de Bernstein-Sato pour plusieurs fonctions
analytiques, Compos. Math. 141 (2005), no. 1, 175–191.
[5] R. Bahloul and N. Takayama, Local Gröbner fan: polyhedral and computational approach, preprint math.AG/0412044,
2004.
[6] F. J. Castro-Jiménez, M., Granger, Explicit calculations in rings of differential operators. Éléments de la théorie dessystèmes différentiels géométriques, 89-128, Sémin. Congr., 8, Soc. Math. France, Paris, 2004.
[7] K. Fukuda, A. N. Jensen and R. Thomas, Computing Gröbner fans, preprint math.AC/0509544, 2005.
[8] A. N. Jensen, A non-regular Groebner fan, preprint math.CO/0501352, 2005.
[9] A. N. Jensen, Gfan, a software system for Gröbner fans, see http://home.imf.au.dk/ajensen/software/gfan/gfan.html.
[10] T. Mora and L. Robbiano, The Gröbner fan of an ideal, J. Symbolic Comput. 6 (1988), no. 2-3, 183–208.
[11] M. Saito, B. Sturmfels and N. Takayama, Gröbner deformations of hypergeometric differential equations, Algorithms
and Computation in Mathematics, 6. Springer-Verlag, 2000.
[12] B. Sturmfels, Gröbner bases and convex polytopes, University Lecture Series, 8. AMS, Providence, RI, 1996.
[13] N. Touda, Local Tropical Variety, preprint math.AG/0511486, 2005.

6