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The Bernstein-Sato polynomial is an important invariant of an element or an ideal in a polynomial ring or power series ring of characteristic zero, with interesting connections to various algebraic and topological aspects of the singularities of the vanishing locus. Work of Musta\c{t}\u{a}, later extended by Bitoun and the third author, provides an analogous Bernstein-Sato theory for regular rings of positive characteristic. In this paper, we extend this theory to singular ambient rings in positive characteristic. We establish finiteness and rationality results for Bernstein-Sato roots for large classes of singular rings, and relate these roots to other classes of numerical invariants defined via the Frobenius map. We also obtain a number of new results and simplified arguments in the regular case., Comment: v2: minor fixes after referee report; 58 pages; comments appreciated

Levasseur and Stafford described the rings of differential operators on various classical invariant rings of characteristic zero; in each of the cases that they considered, the differential operators form a simple ring. Towards an attack on the simplicity of rings of differential operators on invariant rings of linearly reductive groups over the complex numbers, Smith and Van den Bergh asked if differential operators on the corresponding rings of positive prime characteristic lift to characteristic zero differential operators. We prove that, in general, this is not the case for determinantal hypersurfaces, as well as for Pfaffian and symmetric determinantal hypersurfaces. We also prove that, with very few exceptions, these hypersurfaces -- and, more generally, classical invariant rings -- do not admit a mod $p^2$ lift of the Frobenius endomorphism.

Hilbert-Kunz multiplicity and F-signature are numerical invariants of commutative rings in positive characteristic that measure severity of singularities: for a regular ring both invariants are equal to one and the converse holds under mild assumptions. A natural question is for what singular rings these invariants are closest to one. For Hilbert--Kunz multiplicity this question was first considered by the last two authors and attracted significant attention. In this paper, we study this question, i.e., an upper bound, for F-signature and revisit lower bounds on Hilbert--Kunz multiplicity., An updated version with several general improvements

This paper investigates the existence and properties of a Bernstein– Sato functional equation in nonregular settings. In particular, we construct D-modules in which such formal equations can be studied. The existence of the Bernstein–Sato polynomial for a direct summand of a polynomial over a field is proved in this context. It is observed that this polynomial can have zero as a root, or even positive roots. Moreover, a theory of V -filtrations is introduced for nonregular rings, and the existence of these objects is established for what we call differentially extensible summands. This family of rings includes toric, determinantal, and other invariant rings. This new theory is applied to the study of multiplier ideals and Hodge ideals of singular varieties. Finally, we extend known relations among the objects of interest in the smooth case to the setting of singular direct summands of polynomial rings.

In a polynomial ring over a perfect field, the symbolic powers of a prime ideal can be described via differential operators: a classical result by Zariski and Nagata says that the $n$-th symbolic power of a given prime ideal consists of the elements that vanish up to order $n$ on the corresponding variety. However, this description fails in mixed characteristic. In this paper, we use $p$-derivations, a notion due to Buium and Joyal, to define a new kind of differential powers in mixed characteristic, and prove that this new object does coincide with the symbolic powers of prime ideals. This seems to be the first application of $p$-derivations to commutative algebra., In the previous version, the proof of Lemma 2.1 had a gap, due to a wrong claim about the structure of certain essentially smooth algebras. We removed the wrong statement, and fixed the proof of Lemma 2.1. The rest of the paper remains unchanged

The "neural code" is the way the brain characterizes, stores, and processes information. Unraveling the neural code is a key goal of mathematical neuroscience. Topology, coding theory, and, recently, commutative algebra are some the mathematical areas that are involved in analyzing these codes. Neural rings and ideals are algebraic objects that create a bridge between mathematical neuroscience and commutative algebra. A neural ideal is an ideal in a polynomial ring that encodes the combinatorial firing data of a neural code. Using some algebraic techniques one hopes to understand more about the structure of a neural code via neural rings and ideals. In this paper, we introduce an operation, called "polarization," that allows us to relate neural ideals with squarefree monomial ideals, which are very well studied and known for their nice behavior in commutative algebra.