Flat families by strongly stable ideals and a generalization of Gröbner bases

Let J be a strongly stable monomial ideal in S=K[x0,…,xn] and let Mf(J) be the family of all homogeneous ideals I in S such that the set of all terms outside J is a K-vector basis of the quotient S/I. We show that an ideal I belongs to Mf(J) if and only if it is generated by a special set of polynomials, the J-marked basis of I, that in some sense generalizes the notion of reduced Gröbner basis and its constructive capabilities. Indeed, although not every J-marked basis is a Gröbner basis with respect to some term order, a sort of reduced form modulo I∈Mf(J) can be computed for every homogeneous polynomial, so that a J-marked basis can be characterized by a Buchberger-like criterion. Using J-marked bases, we prove that the family Mf(J) can be endowed, in a very natural way, with a structure of an affine scheme that turns out to be homogeneous with respect to a non-standard grading and flat in the origin (the point corresponding to J), thanks to properties ofJ-marked bases analogous to those of Gröbner bases about syzygies.