(n-1)-st Koszul homology and the structure of monomial ideals

Koszul homology of monomial ideals provides a description of the structure of such ideals, not only from a homological point of view (free resolutions, Betti numbers, Hilbert series) but also from an algebraic viewpoint. In this paper we show that, in particular, the homology at degree (n-1), with n the number of indeterminates of the ring, plays an important role for this algebraic description in terms of Stanley and irreducible decompositions.