Let $p$ be an odd prime number and $F$ a field containing a primitive $p$th root of unity. We prove a new restriction on the group-theoretic structure of the absolute Galois group $G_F$ of $F$. Namely, the third subgroup $G_F^{(3)}$ in the descending $p$-central sequence of $G_F$ is the intersection of all open normal subgroups $N$ such that $G_F/N$ is 1, $\mathbb{Z}/p^2$, or the modular group $M_{p^3}$ of order $p^3$.
For prime power $q=p^d$ and a field $F$ containing a root of unity of order $q$ we show that the Galois cohomology ring $H^*(G_F,\dbZ/q)$ is determined by a quotient $G_F^{[3]}$ of the absolute Galois group $G_F$ related to its descending $q$-central sequence. Conversely, we show that $G_F^{[3]}$ is determined by the lower cohomology of $G_F$. This is used to give new examples of pro-$p$ groups which do not occur as absolute Galois groups of fields.
By two well-known results, one of Ax, one of Lubotzky and van den Dries, a profinite group is projective iff it is isomorphic to the absolute Galois group of a pseudo-algebraically closed field. This paper gives an analogous characterization of relatively projective profinite groups as absolute Galois groups of regularly closed fields.
Let p be a prime. We study pro-p groups of p-absolute Galois type, as defined by Lam-Liu-Sharifi-Wake-Wang. We prove that the pro-p completion of the right-angled Artin group associated to a chordal simplicial graph is of p-absolute Galois type, and moreover it satisfies a strong version of the Massey vanishing property. Also, we prove that Demushkin groups are of p-absolute Galois type, and that the free pro-p product -- and, under certain conditions, the direct product -- of two pro-p groups of p-absolute Galois type satisfying the Massey vanishing property is again a pro-p group of p-absolu…
Field Arithmetic studies the interplay between arithmetical properties of fields and their absolute Galois groups. Here we studies fields satisfying local global principles for rational points of varieties and profinite groups satisfying local global principles for solvability of embedding problems.
Let $p$ be a prime. We produce two new families of pro-$p$ groups which are not realizable as absolute Galois groups of fields. To prove this we use the 1-smoothness property of absolute Galois pro-$p$ groups. Moreover, we show in these families one has one-relator pro-$p$ groups which may not be ruled out as absolute Galois groups employing the quadraticity of Galois cohomology (a consequence of Rost-Voevodsky Theorem), or the vanishing of Massey products in Galois cohomology.
In this paper we concentrate on the relations between the structure of small Galois groups, arithmetic of fields, Bloch-Kato conjecture, and Galois groups of maximal pro-$p$-quotients of absolute Galois groups.
This is a report of a talk given at the Oberwolfach workshop on "cohomology of finite groups: Interactions and applications" which was held during July 25th - July 31st, 2010. It is an announcement of some of the results (with motivation) and their applications from the paper "Quotients of absolute Galois groups which determine the entire Galois cohomology"; see arXiv:0905.1364.
For a quadratic field K, we investigate continuous mod p representations of the absolute Galois groups of K that are unramified away from p and infinity. We prove that for certain pairs (K,p), there are no such irreducible representations. We also list some imaginary quadratic fields for which such irreducible representations exist. As an application, we look at elliptic curves with good reduction away from 2 over quadratic fields.
Proofs that an arbitrary field has a separable closure are necessarily non-constructive, and separable closures are unique only up to non-canonical isomorphism. This means that the absolute Galois group of a field is defined only up to inner automorphism. Here we construct a profinite algebraic group which is an inner form of the absolute Galois group. Our construction uses no form of the axiom of choice, and the group is defined up to canonical isomorphism. We also show that the Frobenius associated with a prime of a number field unramified in an extension, which is classically defined only u…
We present several constraints on the absolute Galois groups G_F of fields F containing a primitive pth root of unity, using restrictions on the cohomology of index p normal subgroups from a previous paper by three of the authors. We first classify all maximal p-elementary abelian-by-order p quotients of such G_F. In the case p>2, each such quotient contains a unique closed index p elementary abelian subgroup. This seems to be the first case in which one can completely classify nontrivial quotients of absolute Galois groups by characteristic subgroups of normal subgroups. We then derive analog…
We observe that some basic but fundamental constructions in Galois theory can be used to obtain some interesting restrictions on the structure of Galois groups of maximal $p$-extensions of fields containing a primitive $p$th root of unity. This is an extension of some significant ideas of Demushkin, Labute and Serre from local fields to all fields containing a primitive $p$th root of unity. Our techniques use certain natural simple Galois extensions together with some considerations in Galois cohomology and Massey products.
The main purpose of this paper is to extend results on isomorphism types of the abelianized absolute Galois group $\mathcal G_K^{ab}$, where $K$ denotes imaginary quadratic field. In particular, we will show that if the class number $h_K$ of an imaginary quadratic field $K$ different from $\mathbb Q(i)$, $\mathbb Q(\sqrt{-2})$ is a fixed prime number $p$ then there are only two isomorphism types of $\mathcal G_K^{ab}$ which could occur. For instance, this result implies that imaginary quadratic fields of the discriminant $D_K$ belonging to the set $\{-35, -51, -91, -115, -123, -187, -235,$ $ -…
We present several constraints on the absolute Galois groups G_F of fields F containing a primitive pth root of unity, using restrictions on the cohomology of index p normal subgroups from a previous paper by three of the authors. We first classify all maximal p-elementary abelian-by-order p quotients of such G_F. In the case p>2, each such quotient contains a unique closed index p elementary abelian subgroup. This seems to be the first case in which one can completely classify nontrivial quotients of absolute Galois groups by characteristic subgroups of normal subgroups. We then derive analog…
Our aim of this and subsequent papers is to enlighten (a part of, presumably) arithmetic structures of knots. This paper introduces a notion of profinite knots which extends topological knots and shows its various basic properties. Particularly an action of the absolute Galois group of the rational number field on profinite knots is rigorously established, which is attained by our extending the action of Drinfeld's Grothendieck-Teichmüller group on profinite braid groups into on profinite knots.
We prove that certain fields have the property that their absolute Galois groups are free as profinite groups: the function field of a real curve with no real points; the maximal abelian extension of a 2-variable Laurent series field over a separably closed field; and the maximal abelian extension of the function field of a curve over a finite field. These results are related to generalizations of Shafarevich's conjecture.
The main purpose of this paper is to describe the abelian part $\mathcal G^{ab}_{K}$ of the absolute Galois group of a global function field $K$ as pro-finite group. We will show that the characteristic $p$ of $K$ and the non $p$-part of the class group of $K$ are determined by $\mathcal G^{ab}_{K}$. The converse is almost true: isomorphism type of $\mathcal G_K^{ab}$ as pro-finite group is determined by the invariant $d_K$ of the constant field $\mathbb F_q$ introduced in first section and the non $p$-part of the class group.
Let $p$ be a prime number, $F$ a field containing a root of unity of order $p$, and $G_F$ the absolute Galois group. Extending results of Hopkins, Wickelgren, Minac and Tan, we prove that the triple Massey product $H^1(G_F)^3\to H^2(G_F)$ contains $0$ whenever it is nonempty. This gives a new restriction on the possible profinite group structure of $G_F$.
The main problem this thesis deals with is the characterization of profinite groups which are realizable as absolute Galois groups of fields: this is currently one of the major problems in Galois theory. Usually one reduces the problem to the pro-$p$ case, i.e., one would like to know which pro-$p$ groups occur as maximal pro-$p$ Galois groups, i.e., maximal pro-$p$ quotients of absolute Galois groups. Indeed, pro-$p$ groups are easier to deal with than general profinite groups, yet they carry a lot of information on the whole absolute Galois group. We define a new class of pro-$p$ groups, cal…
Given an object over the algebraic closure Qbar of Q, there is often no reason for invariants of the corresponding holomorphic object to be preserved by the absolute Galois group Gal(Qbar/Q), and in general this is not true, although it is sometimes surprising to observe in practice. The case of covers of the projective line branched only over the points 0, 1, and infinity, through Belyi's theorem, leads to Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants program for understanding the absolute Galois group through its faithful action on such covers. This note is motivated by Catanese's question about a higher…
Geometric properties of homomorphisms between the absolute Galois groups of mixed-characteristic complete discrete valuation fields with perfect residue fields
This is a revision of the paper that was previously entitled "Weighted Completion of Galois Groups and Some Conjectures of Deligne". Fix a prime number $ł$. We prove a conjecture stated by Ihara, which he attributes to Deligne, about the action of the absolute Galois group on the pro-$ł$ completion of the fundamental group of the thrice punctured projective line. Similar techniques are also used to prove part of a conjecture of Goncharov, also about the action of the absolute Galois group on the fundamental group of the thrice punctured projective line. The main technical tool is the weighted …
Based on the analogies between mapping class groups and absolute Galois groups, we introduce an arithmetic pro-$\ell$ analogue of Orr invariants for a Galois element associated with Galois action on étale fundamental groups of punctured projective lines. At the same time, we also introduce pro-$\ell$ Orr space as an arithmetic analogue of Orr space whose third homotopy group is a target group of Orr invariant. We then determine its rank as $\mathbb{Z}_{\ell}$-module following Igusa-Orr's computation. Moreover, we investigate its relation with Ellenberg's obstruction to $π_1$-sections associate…
In this article we consider outer Galois actions on a free profinite group of rank two, induced by the étale fundamental group of a projective line minus three points or of a pointed elliptic curve over a number field. Under mild technical assumptions their respective images uniquely determine the curves and the number fields.
We study the relationship between the local and global Galois theory of function fields over a complete discretely valued field. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for local separable extensions to descend to global extensions, and for the local absolute Galois group to inject into the global absolute Galois group. As an application we obtain a local-global principle for the index of a variety over such a function field. In this context we also study algebraic versions of van Kampen's theorem, describing the global absolute Galois group as a pushout of local absolute Galois groups.
For a list $\cal{L}$ of finite groups and for a profinite group $G$, we consider the intersection $T(G)$ of all open normal subgroups $N$ of $G$ with $G/N$ in $\cal{L}$. We give a cohomological characterization of the epimorphisms $π\colon S\to G$ of profinite groups (satisfying some additional requirements) such that $π[T(S)]=T(G)$. For $p$ prime, this is used to describe cohomologically the profinite groups $G$ whose $n$th term $G_{(n,p)}$ (resp., $G^{(n,p)}$) in the $p$-Zassenhaus filtration (resp., lower $p$-central filtration) is an intersection of this form. When $G=G_F$ is the absolute …
A splitting field of a central simple algebra is said to be absolute Galois if it is Galois over some fixed subfield of the centre of the algebra. The paper provides an existence theorem for such fields over global fields with enough roots of unity. As an application, all twisted function fields and all twisted Laurent series rings over symbol algebras (or p-algebras) over global fields are crossed products. A closely related statement holds for division algebras over Henselian valued fields with global residue field. The existence of absolute Galois splitting fields in central simple algebras…
We investigate the Galois cohomology of finitely generated maximal pro-$p$ quotients of absolute Galois groups. Assuming the well-known conjectural description of these groups, we show that Galois cohomology has the PBW property. Hence in particular it is a Koszul algebra. This answers positively a conjecture by Positselski in this case. We also provide an analogous unconditional result about Pythagorean fields. Moreover, we establish some results that relate the quadratic dual of Galois cohomology with $p$-Zassenhaus filtration on the group. This paper also contains a survey of Koszul propert…
In this article, we prove that for a convergent sequence of residually absolutely irreducible representations of the absolute Galois group of a number field $F$ with coefficients in a domain finite over a power series ring over a $p$-adic integer ring, the set of places of $F$ where some of the representations ramifies has density zero. Using this, we extend a result of Das--Rajan to such convergent sequences. We also establish a strong multiplicity one theorem for big Galois representations.
We describe the Sylow subgroups of Gal(Q) for an odd prime p, by observing and studying their decomposition as a semidirect product of Z_p acting on F, where F is a free pro-p group, and Z_p are the p-adic integers. We determine the finite Z_p-quotients of F and more generally show that every split embedding problem of Z_p-groups for F is solvable. Moreover, we analyze the Z_p-action on generators of F.
Let $F$ be a field of characteristic $0$ containing all roots of unity. We construct a functorial compact Hausdorff space $X_F$ whose profinite fundamental group agrees with the absolute Galois group of $F$, i.e. the category of finite covering spaces of $X_F$ is equivalent to the category of finite extensions of $F$. The construction is based on the ring of rational Witt vectors of $F$. In the case of the cyclotomic extension of $\mathbb{Q}$, the classical fundamental group of $X_F$ is a (proper) dense subgroup of the absolute Galois group of $F$. We also discuss a variant of this constructio…
It is proved that every two-dimensional residual Galois representation of the absolute Galois group of an arbitrary number field lifts to a characteristic zero $p$-adic representation, if local lifting problems at places above $p$ are unobstructed.
We show that the Galois group $Gal(\bar{\Q} /\Q)$ operates faithfully on the set of connected components of the moduli spaces of surfaces of general type, and also that for each element $σ\in Gal(\bar{\Q} /\Q)$ different from the identity and from complex conjugation, there is a surface of general type such that $X$ and the Galois conjugate variety $X^σ$ have nonisomorphic fundamental groups. The result was announced by the second author at the Alghero Conference 'Topology of algebraic varieties' in september 2006. Before the present paper was actually written, we received a very interesting p…
We present a method for computing complete lists of number fields in cases where the Galois group, as an abstract group, appears as a Galois group in smaller degree. We apply this method to find the twenty-five octic fields with Galois group $\textrm{PSL}_2(7)$ and smallest absolute discriminant. We carry out a number of related computations, including determining the octic field with Galois group $2^3{:}\textrm{GL}_3(2)$ of smallest absolute discriminant.
Let L/K be an extension of number fields where L/\Q is abelian. We define such an extension to be Leopoldt if the ring of integers O_L of L is free over the associated order A_L/K. Furthermore we define an abelian number field K to be Leopoldt if every finite extension L/K with L/Q abelian is Leopoldt in the sense above. Previous results of Leopoldt, Chan & Lim, Bley, and Byott & Lettl culminate in the proof that the n-th cyclotomic field Q^(n) is Leopoldt for every n. In this paper, we generalize this result by giving more examples of Leopoldt extensions and fields, along with explicit genera…
Let $A$ be an absolutely simple abelian variety without (potential) complex multiplication, defined over the number field $K$. Suppose that either $\dim A=2$ or $A$ is of $\operatorname{GL}_2$-type: we give an explicit bound $\ell_0(A,K)$ such that, for every prime $\ell>\ell_0(A,K)$, the image of the absolute Galois group of $K$ in $\operatorname{Aut}(T_\ell(A))$ is as large as it is allowed to be by endomorphisms and polarizations.
A main problem in Galois theory is to characterize the fields with a given absolute Galois group. We apply a K-theoretic method for constructing valuations to study this problem in various situations. As a first application we obtain an algebraic proof of the 0-dimensional case of Grothendieck's anabelian conjecture (proven by Pop), which says that finitely generated infinite fields are determined up to purely inseparable extensions by their absolute Galois groups. As a second application (which is a joint work with Fesenko) we analyze the arithmetic structure of fields with the same absolute …
Let $K$ be a field whose characteristic is prime to a fixed integer $n$ with $μ_n \subset K$, and choose $ω\in μ_n$ a primitive $n$th root of unity. Denote the absolute Galois group of $K$ by $\operatorname{Gal}(K)$, and the mod-$n$ central-descending series of $\operatorname{Gal}(K)$ by $\operatorname{Gal}(K)^{(i)}$. Recall that Kummer theory, together with our choice of $ω$, provides a functorial isomorphism between $\operatorname{Gal}(K)/\operatorname{Gal}(K)^{(2)}$ and $\operatorname{Hom}(K^\times,\mathbb{Z}/n)$. Analogously to Kummer theory, in this note we use the Merkurjev-Suslin theore…
Let $K$ be a complete, discretely valued field with finite residue field and $G_K$ its absolute Galois group. The subject of this note is the study of the set of positive integers $d$ for which there exists an absolutely irreducible $\ell$-adic representation of $G_K$ of dimension $d$ with rational traces on inertia. Our main result is that non-Sophie Germain primes are not in this set when the residue characteristic of $K$ is $> 3$. The result stated in the title is a special case.
We examine which representations of the absolute Galois group of a field of finite characteristic with image over a finite field of the same characteristic may be constructed by the Galois group's action on the division points of an appropriate Drinfeld module.
When monic integral polynomials of degree $n \geq 2$ are ordered by the maximum of the absolute value of their coefficients, the Hilbert irreducibility theorem implies that asymptotically 100% are irreducible and have Galois group isomorphic to $S_n$. In particular, amongst such polynomials whose coefficients are bounded by $B$ in absolute value, asymptotically $(1+o(1))(2B+1)^n$ are irreducible and have Galois group $S_n$. When $G$ is a proper transitive subgroup of $S_n$, however, the asymptotic count of polynomials with Galois group $G$ has been determined only in very few cases. Here, we s…
Suppose \( ρ_1 \) and \( ρ_2 \) are two pure Galois representations of the absolute Galois group of a number field $K$ of weights \( k_1 \) and \( k_2 \) respectively, having equal normalized Frobenius traces \( Tr(ρ_1(σ_v)) /Nv^{k_1/2}\) and \( Tr(ρ_2(σ_v)) /Nv^{k_2/2}\) at a set of primes \( v\) of $K$ with positive upper density. Assume further that the algebraic monodromy group of $ρ_1$ is connected and the repesentation is absolutely irreducible. We prove that \( ρ_1 \) and \( ρ_2 \) are twists of each other by power of a Tate twist times a character of finite order. We apply this to modu…
We describe algorithms to compute fixed fields, splitting fields and towers of radical extensions without using polynomial factorisation in towers or constructing any field containing the splitting field, instead extending Galois group computations for this task. We also describe the computation of geometric Galois groups (monodromy groups) and their use in computing absolute factorizations.
Let p be a prime and F a field containing a primitive pth root of unity. Then for n in N, the cohomological dimension of the maximal pro-p-quotient G of the absolute Galois group of F is <=n if and only if the corestriction maps H^n(H,Fp) -> H^n(G,Fp) are surjective for all open subgroups H of index p. Using this result we derive a surprising generalization to dim_Fp H^n(H,Fp) of Schreier's formula for dim_Fp H^1(H,Fp).
We introduce Galois families of modular forms. They are a new kind of family coming from Galois representations of the absolute Galois groups of rational function fields over the rational field. We exhibit some examples and provide an infinite Galois family of non-liftable weight one Katz modular eigenforms over an algebraic closure of F_p for p in {3,5,7,11}.
Let $q=p^s$ be a prime power, $F$ a field containing a root of unity of order $q$, and $G_F$ its absolute Galois group. We determine a new canonical quotient $\mathrm{Gal}(F_{(3)}/F)$ of $G_F$ which encodes the full mod-$q$ cohomology ring $H^*(G_F,\mathbb{Z}/q)$ and is minimal with respect to this property. We prove some fundamental structure theorems related to these quotients. In particular, it is shown that when $q=p$ is an odd prime, $F_{(3)}$ is the compositum of all Galois extensions $E$ of $F$ such that $\mathrm{Gal}(E/F)$ is isomorphic to $\{1\}$, $\mathbb{Z}/p$ or to the nonabelian g…
We construct various explicit Herr complexes that compute the Galois cohomology of a $p$-adic representation of the absolute Galois group of a complete discrete valuation field of characteristic $0$ with a perfect residue field of characteristic $p$, using the associated $(φ,τ)$-modules (defined by Xavier Caruso), instead of $(φ,Γ)$-modules. We also give an application to $p$-divisible groups.
