We settle the negativity conjecture of Vasconcelos for the Chern number of an ideal in certain unmixed quotients of regular local rings by explicit calculation of the Hilbert polynomials of all ideals generated by systems of parameters. Introduction Let I be an m-primary ideal in a local ring (R,m) of dimension d. Let H(I, n) = λ(R/I) denote the Hilbert function of I where λ(M) denotes the leng...
