Closed Neighborhood Ideals of Finite Simple Graphs

Abstract: We investigate Sharifan and Moradi's closed neighborhood ideal of a finite simple graph, which is a square-free monomial ideal in a polynomial ring over a field. We explicitly describe the minimal irreducible decompositions of these ideals. We also characterize the trees whose closed neighborhood ideals are Cohen-Macaulay; in particular, this property for closed neighborhood ideals of trees is characteristic independent.