On ideals whose adic and symbolic topologies are linearly equivalent

Ideals whose adic and symbolic topologies are linearly equivalent are characterized in terms of analytic spread and u-essential prime divisors. Using this characterization, under certain conditions on a Noetherian ring R and an ideal I of R it is shown that the I-adic and the I-symbolic topologies are linearly equivalent iff gr(I,R)_red is a domain, and locally unmixed rings are characterized as those rings in which the adic and the symbolic topologies of every ideal of the principal class are linearly equivalent.