The trace of the canonical module

Abstract: The trace of the canonical module (the canonical trace) determines the non-Gorenstein locus of a local Cohen--Macaulay ring. We call a local Cohen--Macaulay ring nearly Gorenstein, if its canonical trace contains the maximal ideal. Similar definitions can be made for positively graded Cohen--Macaulay $K$-algebras. We study the canonical trace for tensor products and Segre products of algebras, as well as of (squarefree) Veronese subalgebras. The results are used to classify the nearly Gorenstein Hibi rings. We study connections between the class of nearly Gorenstein rings and that of almost Gorenstein rings. We show that in dimension one, the former class includes the latter.