Definition: If I ⊂S is an ideal in a polynomial ring (or Gorenstein ring) and a1..as are elements of I, then K = (a1..as):I is called an s-residual intersection of I if the codimension of K is at least s.
In the simplest case, s == codim I, the ideal K is said to be linked to I if also I = (a1..as):K; this is automatic when S/I is Cohen-Macaulay, and in this case S/K is also Cohen-Macaulay; see Peskine-Szpiro, Liaison des variétés algébriques. I. Invent. Math. 26 (1974), 271–302).
The theory for s>c, which has been used in algebraic geometry since the 19th century, was initiated in a commutative algebra setting by Artin and Nagata in the paper Residual intersections in Cohen-Macaulay rings. J. Math. Kyoto Univ. 12 (1972), 307–323.
Craig Huneke (Strongly Cohen-Macaulay schemes and residual intersections, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 277 (1983), no. 2, 739–763) proved that an s-residual intersection K is Cohen-Macaulay if I satisfies the Gd condition and is strongly Cohen-Macaulay, and successive authors have weakened the latter condition to sliding depth, and, most recently, Bernd Ulrich (Artin-Nagata properties and reductions of ideals. Commutative algebra: syzygies, multiplicities, and birational algebra, Contemp. Math., 159, 1994) showed that the weaker condition depth( S/(It) ) >= dim(S/I) - (t-1) for t = 1..s-codim I +1 suffices. All these properties are true if I is licci.
This package implements tests for most of these properties.