We introduce the cohomological blow up of a graded Artinian Gorenstein (AG) algebra along a surjective map, which we term BUG (Blow Up Gorenstein) for short. This is intended to translate to an algebraic context the cohomology ring of a blow up of a
projective manifold along a projective submanifold. We show, among other things, that a BUG is a connected sum, that it is the general fiber in a flat family of algebras, and that it preserves the strong Lefschetz property. We also show that standard graded compressed algebras are rarely BUGs, and we classify those BUGs that are complete intersections. We have included many examples throughout this manuscript.
We show that the Specht ideal of a two-rowed partition is perfect over an arbitrary field, provided that the characteristic is either zero or bounded below by the size of the second row of the partition, and we show this lower bound is tight. We also
establish perfection and other properties of certain variants of Specht ideals, and find a surprising connection to the weak Lefschetz property. Our results in particular give a self-contained proof of Cohen-Macaulayness of certain $h$-equals sets, a result previously obtained by Etingof-Gorsky-Losev over the complex numbers using rational Cherednik algebras.
A connected sum construction for local rings was introduced in a paper by H. Ananthnarayan, L. Avramov, and W.F. Moore. In the graded Artinian Gorenstein case, this can be viewed as an algebraic analogue of the topological construction of the same na
me. We give two alternative description of this algebraic connected sum: the first uses algebraic analogues of Thom classes of vector bundles and Gysin homomorphisms, the second is in terms of Macaulay dual generators. We also investigate the extent to which the connected sum construction preserves the weak or strong Lefschetz property, thus providing new classes of rings which satisfy these properties.
Free extensions of commutative Artinian algebras were introduced by T. Harima and J. Watanabe. The Jordan type of a multiplication map $m$ by a nilpotent element of an Artinian algebra is the partition determining the sizes of the blocks in a Jordan
matrix for $m$. We show that a free extension of the Artinian algebra $A$ with fibre $B$ is a deformation of the usual tensor product. This has consequences for the generic Jordan types of $A,B$ and $C$, showing that the Jordan type of $C$ is at least that of the usual tensor product in the dominance order. We give applications to algebras of relative coinvariants of linear group actions on a polynomial ring.
