Ideals preserved by linear changes of coordinates in positive characteristic

We consider the polynomial ring in finitely many variables over an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic, and initiate the systematic study of ideals preserved by the action of the general linear group by changes of coordinates. We show that these ideals are classified by sets of carry patterns, which are finite sequences of integers introduced by Doty in the study of representation theory of the polynomial ring. We provide an algorithm to decompose an invariant ideal as a sum of carry ideals with no redundancies. Next, we study the conditions under which one carry ideal is contained in another, and completely characterize the image of the multiplication map between the space of linear forms and a subrepresentation of forms of degree d. Finally, we begin an investigation into free resolutions of these ideals. Our results are most explicit in the case of carry ideals in two variables, where we completely describe the monomial generators and syzygies using base-p expansions of the parameters involved, and we provide a formula for the structure of the Tor modules in the Grothendieck group of representations.