Homogeneous coordinate rings as direct summands of regular rings

Abstract

We study the question of when a ring can be realized as a direct summand of a regular ring by examining the case of homogeneous coordinate rings. We present very strong obstacles to expressing a graded ring with isolated singularity as a finite graded direct summand. For several classes of examples (del Pezzo surfaces, hypersurfaces), we give a complete classification of which coordinate rings can be expressed as direct summands (not necessarily finite), and in doing so answer a question of Hara about the finite F-representation type (FFRT) property of the quintic del Pezzo. We also examine what happens in the case where the ring does not have isolated singularities, through topological arguments: as an example, we give a classification of which coordinate rings of singular cubic surfaces can be written as finite direct summands of regular rings.