Limit Behavior of the Rational Powers of Monomial Ideals

We investigate the rational powers of ideals. We find that in the case of monomial ideals, the canonical indexing leads to a characterization of the rational powers yielding that symbolic powers of squarefree monomial ideals are indeed rational powers themselves. Using the connection with symbolic powers techniques, we use splittings to show the convergence of depths and normalized Castelnuovo-Mumford regularities. We show the convergence of Stanley depths for rational powers, and as a consequence of this we show the before-now unknown convergence of Stanley depths of integral closure powers. In addition, we show the finiteness of asymptotic associated primes, and we find that the normalized lengths of local cohomology modules converge for rational powers, and hence for symbolic powers of squarefree monomial ideals.