Depth functions of symbolic powers of homogeneous ideals

This paper addresses the problem of comparing minimal free resolutions of symbolic powers of an ideal. Our investigation is focused on the behavior of the function depth R/I^(t) = dim R - pd I^(t) - 1, where I^(t) denotes the t-th symbolic power of a homogeneous ideal I in a noetherian polynomial ring R and pd denotes the projective dimension. It has been an open question whether the function depth R/I^(t) is non-increasing if I is a squarefree monomial ideal. We show that depth R/I^(t) is almost non-increasing in the sense that depth R/I^(s) \ge depth R/I^(t) for all s \ge 1 and t \in E(s), where E(s) = \cup_{i \ge 1} {t \in N| i(s-1)+1 \le t \le is} (which contains all integers t \ge (s-1)^2+1). The range E(s) is the best possible since we can find squarefree monomial ideals I such that depth R/I^(s) < depth R/I^(t) for t \not\in E(s), which gives a negative answer to the above question. Another open question asks whether the function depth R/I^(t) is always constant for t \gg 0. We are able to construct counter-examples to this question by monomial ideals. On the other hand, we show that if I is a monomial ideal such that I^(t) is integrally closed for t \gg 0 (e.g. if I is a squarefree monomial ideal), then depth R/I^(t) is constant for t \gg 0 with lim_{t \to \infty} depth R/I^(t) = dim R - dim \oplus_{t \ge 0} I^(t)/m I^(t). Our last result (which is the main contribution of this paper) shows that for any positive numerical function \phi(t) which is periodic for t \gg 0, there exist a polynomial ring R and a homogeneous ideal I such that depth R/I^(t) = \phi(t) for all t \ge 1. As a consequence, for any non-negative numerical function \psi(t) which is periodic for t \gg 0, there is a homogeneous ideal I and a number c such that pd I^(t) = \psi(t) + c for all t \ge 1.