The absolutely Koszul property of Veronese subrings and Segre products

Absolutely Koszul algebras are a class of rings over which any finite graded module has a rational Poincar\'e series. We provide a criterion to detect non-absolutely Koszul rings. Combining the criterion with machine computations, we identify large families of Veronese subrings and Segre products of polynomial rings which are not absolutely Koszul. In particular, we classify completely the absolutely Koszul algebras among Segre products of polynomial rings, at least in characteristic $0$.