Regularity of binomial edge ideals of chordal graphs

Abstract: In this paper we prove the conjectured upper bound for Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of binomial edge ideals posed in [23], in the case of chordal graphs. Indeed, we show that the regularity of any chordal graph G is bounded above by the number of maximal cliques of G, denoted by c(G). Moreover, we classify all chordal graphs G for which L(G) = c(G), where L(G) is the sum of the lengths of longest induced paths of connected components of G. We call such graphs strongly interval graphs. Moreover, we show that the regularity of a strongly interval graph G coincides with L(G) as well as c(G).