Let $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p > 0$. We study obstructions to lifting to characteristic 0 the faithful continuous action $ϕ$ of a finite group $G$ on $k[[t]]$. To each such $ϕ$ a theorem of Katz and Gabber associates an action of $G$ on a smooth projective curve $Y$ over $k$. We say that the KGB obstruction of $ϕ$ vanishes if $G$ acts on a smooth projective curve $X$ in characteristic 0 in such a way that $X/H$ and $Y/H$ have the same genus for all subgroups $H \subset G$. We determine for which $G$ the KGB obstruction of every $ϕ$ vanishes. We also consider analogous problems in which one requires only that an obstruction to lifting $ϕ$ due to Bertin vanishes for some $ϕ$, or for all sufficiently ramified $ϕ$. These results provide evidence for a strengthening of Oort's lifting conjecture.
Let X be a smooth projective hyperelliptic curve over an algeraically closed field k of prime characteristic p. The aim of this note is to find necessary and sufficient conditions on the automorphism group of the curve X to be lifted to characteristic zero. The results will be generalised for a certain family of curves that we call cyclic curves.
Given a tropical divisor $D$ in the intersection of two tropical plane curves, we study when it can be realized as the tropicalization of the intersection of two algebraic curves, and give a sufficient condition. We show that under a certain condition involving a graph determined by these tropical curves, we can algorithmically find algebraic curves such that the tropicalization of their intersection is $D$.
In this note we show that a special case of a recent result by Obus-Wewers (used as a black box) together with a deformation argument in characteristic $p$ leads to a proof of the Oort Conjecture in the general case. A boundedness result is given as well.
Tropicalization is a procedure for associating a polyhedral complex in Euclidean space to a subvariety of an algebraic torus. We study the question of which graphs arise from tropicalizing algebraic curves. By using Baker's specialization of linear systems from curves to graphs, we are able to give a necessary condition for a balanced weighted graph to be the tropicalization of a curve. Our condition reproduces a generalization of Speyer's well-spacedness condition and also gives new conditions. In addition, it suggests a new combinatorial structure on tropicalizations of algebraic curves.
Tropical geometry gives a bound on the ranks of divisors on curves in terms of the combinatorics of the dual graph of a degeneration. We show that for a family of examples, curves realizing this bound might only exist over certain characteristics or over certain fields of definition. Our examples also apply to the theory of metrized complexes and weighted graphs. These examples arise by relating the lifting problem to matroid realizability. We also give a proof of Mnëv universality with explicit bounds on the size of the matroid, which may be of independent interest.
Given a complete real-valued field $k$ of residue characteristic zero, we study properties of a differential form $ω$ on a smooth proper $k$-analytic curve $X$. In particular, we associate to $(X,ω)$ a natural tropical reduction datum combining tropical data of $(X,ω)$ and algebra-geometric reduction data over the residue field $\widetilde{k}$. We show that this datum satisfies natural compatibility condition, and prove a lifting theorem asserting that any compatible tropical reduction datum lifts to an actual pair $(X,ω)$. In particular, we obtain a short proof of the main result of a work [B…
In this paper we prove several lifting theorems for morphisms of tropical curves. We interpret the obstruction to lifting a finite harmonic morphism of augmented metric graphs to a morphism of algebraic curves as the non-vanishing of certain Hurwitz numbers, and we give various conditions under which this obstruction does vanish. In particular we show that any finite harmonic morphism of (non-augmented) metric graphs lifts. We also give various applications of these results. For example, we show that linear equivalence of divisors on a tropical curve C coincides with the equivalence relation g…
Given a complete real-valued field $k$ of residue characteristic zero, we study properties of a meromorphic $q$-differential form $ξ$ (a section of $Ω_X^{\otimes q}$) on a smooth proper $k$-analytic curve $X$. In particular, we associate to $(X,ξ)$ a natural tropical reduction datum combining tropical-geometric data over the value group of $|k^\times|$ and algebro-geometric reduction data over the residue field $\widetilde{k}$. We show that this datum satisfies natural compatibility conditions, and prove a lifting theorem asserting that any compatible tropical reduction datum lifts to an actua…
We study an operation, that we call lifting, creating non-isomorphic monomial curves from a single monomial curve. Our main result says that all but finitely many liftings of a monomial curve have Cohen-Macaulay tangent cones even if the tangent cone of the original curve is not Cohen-Macaulay. This implies that the Betti sequence of the tangent cone is eventually constant under this operation. Moreover, all liftings have Cohen-Macaulay tangent cones when the original monomial curve has a Cohen-Macaulay tangent cone. In this case, all the Betti sequences are nothing but the Betti sequence of t…
In this paper we investigate the problem of lifting of Galois covers between algebraic curves from characteristic p>0 to characteristic 0. We prove a refined version of the main result of Garuti concerning this problem in [Ga]. We formulate a refined version of the Oort conjecture on liftings of cyclic Galois covers between curves. We introduce the notion of fake liftings of cyclic Galois covers between curves, their existence would contradict the Oort conjecture, and we study the geometry of their semi-stable models. Finally, we introduce and investigate on some examples the smoothening proce…
Proves that if a curve has totally split reduction and the corresponding skeleton (as a metric graph) is a chain of loops with generic edge lengths, then every divisor on the graph with imposed ramification at the rightmost vertex $p$ of the skeleton lifts to a divisor class on the curve with the same ramification at some point $P$ that retracts to $p$, extending the work of Cartwright-Jensen-Payne. Gives a positive answer to lifting proper tropical intersections within a polytopal domain in an analytic torus.
The lifting problem that we consider asks: given a smooth curve in characteristic p and a group of automorphisms, can we lift the curve, along with the automorphisms, to characteristic zero? One can reduce this to a local question (the so-called local lifting problem) involving continuous group actions on formal power series rings. In this expository article, we overview much of the progress that has been made toward determining when the local lifting problem has a solution, and we give a taste of the work currently being undertaken. Of particular interest is the case when the group of automor…
This work continues the study of residually wild morphisms $f\colon Y\to X$ of Berkovich curves initiated by Cohen, Temkin and Trushin in [CTT16]. The different function $δ_f$ introduced in [CTT16] is the primary discrete invariant of such covers. When $f$ is not residually tame, it provides a non-trivial enhancement of the classical invariant of $f$ consisting of morphisms of reductions $\widetilde{f}\colon \widetilde{Y}\to\widetilde{X}$ and metric skeletons $Γ_f\colon Γ_Y\toΓ_X$. In this paper we interpret $δ_f$ as the norm of the canonical trace section $τ_f$ of the dualizing sheaf $ω_f$, a…
Tropicalization is a procedure that takes subvarieties of an algebraic torus to balanced weighted rational complexes in space. In this paper, we study the tropicalizations of curves in surfaces in 3-space. These are balanced rational weighted graphs in tropical surfaces. Specifically, we study the `lifting' problem: given a graph in a tropical surface, can one find a corresponding algebraic curve in a surface? We develop specific combinatorial obstructions to lifting a graph by reducing the problem to the question of whether or not one can factor a polynomial with particular support in the cha…
The lifting problem for curves with automorphisms asks whether we can lift a smooth projective characteristic p curve with a group G of automorphisms to characteristic zero. This was solved by Grothendieck when G acts with prime-to-p stabilizers, and there has been much progress over the last few decades in the wild case. We survey the techniques and obstructions for this lifting problem, aiming at a reader whose background is limited to scheme theory at the level of Hartshorne's book. Throughout, we include numerous examples and clarifying remarks. We also provide a list of open questions.
Let $X$ be an integral projective variety of codimension two, degree $d$ and dimension $r$ and $Y$ be its general hyperplane section. The problem of lifting generators of minimal degree $σ$ from the homogeneous ideal of $Y$ to the homogeneous ideal of $X$ is studied. A conjecture is given in terms of $d$, $r$ and $σ$; it is proved in the cases $r=1,2,3$. A description is given of linear systems on smooth plane curves whose dimension is almost maximal.
In this paper, we study deformations of pairs (C,G) where G is a height 2 BT(or BT_n) group over a complete curve on algebraically closed field k of characteristic p. We prove that, if the curve C is a versal deformation of G, then there exists a unique lifting of the pair to the Witt ring W. We apply this result in the case of Shimura curves to obtain a lifting criterion.
We study the j-invariant of the canonical lifting of an elliptic curve as a Witt vector. We prove that its Witt coordinates lie in an open affine subset of the j-line and deduce the existence of a universal formula for the j-invariant of the canonical lifting. The canonical lifting of the elliptic curves with j-invariant 0 and 1728 over any characteristic are also explicitly found.
Let K be an algebraically closed, complete non-Archimedean field. The purpose of this paper is to carefully study the extent to which finite morphisms of algebraic K-curves are controlled by certain combinatorial objects, called skeleta. A skeleton is a metric graph embedded in the Berkovich analytification of X. A skeleton has the natural structure of a metrized complex of curves. We prove that a finite morphism of K-curves gives rise to a finite harmonic morphism of a suitable choice of skeleta. We use this to give analytic proofs of stronger "skeletonized" versions of some foundational resu…
Let C be a curve over a complete valued field with infinite residue field whose skeleton is a chain of loops with generic edge lengths. We prove that any divisor on the chain of loops that is rational over the value group lifts to a divisor of the same rank on C, confirming a conjecture of Cools, Draisma, Robeva, and the third author.
Let $G=D_p$ be the dihedral group of order $2p$, where $p$ is an odd prime. Let $k$ an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p$. We show that any action of $G$ on the ring $k[[y]]$ can be lifted to an action on $R[[y]]$, where $R$ is some complete discrete valuation ring with residue field $k$ and fraction field of characteristic 0.
Let $ρ: G \to \operatorname{GL}(V)$ be a rational representation of a reductive linear algebraic group $G$ defined over $\mathbb C$ on a finite dimensional complex vector space $V$. We show that, for any generic smooth (resp. $C^M$) curve $c : \mathbb R \to V // G$ in the categorical quotient $V // G$ (viewed as affine variety in some $\mathbb C^n$) and for any $t_0 \in \mathbb R$, there exists a positive integer $N$ such that $t \mapsto c(t_0 \pm (t-t_0)^N)$ allows a smooth (resp. $mathbb C^M$) lift to the representation space near $t_0$. ($C^M$ denotes the Denjoy--Carleman class associated w…
We solve the local lifting problem for the alternating group A_4, thus showing that it is a local Oort group. Specifically, if k is an algebraically closed field of characteristic 2, we prove that every A_4-extension of k[[s]] lifts to characteristic zero. As a consequence, every A_4-branched cover of smooth projective curves in characteristic 2 lifts to characteristic zero.
We determine the smooth locus and the locus of canonical singularities in the Cornalba compactification \bar S_g of the moduli space S_g of spin curves, i.e., smooth curves of genus g with a theta characteristic. Moreover, the following lifting result for pluricanonical forms is proved: Every pluricanonical form on the smooth locus of \bar S_g extends holomorphically to a desingularisation of \bar S_g.
Let R be a complete discrete valuation ring of mixed characteristics, with algebraically closed residue field k. We study the existence problem of equivariant liftings to R of Galois covers of nodal curves over k. Using formal geometry, we show that this problem is actually a local one. We apply this local-to-global principle to obtain new results concerning the existence of such liftings.
We prove a lifting theorem for odd Frattini covers of finite groups. Using this, we characterize solvable groups and more generally p-solvable groups in terms of containing a triple of elements of distinct prime power orders with product 1. This is also related to various questions about Fried's modular tower program and properties of Hurwitz spaces of covers of curves.
Contents: Rational functions with given monodromy on generic curves (I. Bouw & S. Wewers); Can deformation rings of group representations not be local complete intersections? (T. Chinburg); Lifting an automorphism group to finite characteristic (G. Cornelissen); Flat connections and representations of the fundamental group in characteristic p>0 (C. Gasbarri) Questions on p-torsion of hyperelliptic curves (D. Glass & R. Pries); Automorphisms of curves and stable reduction (C. Lehr & M. Matignon); p-groups as automorphism groups of curves in characteristic p; Lifting Galois covers of smooth curv…
We study the tropicalization of intersections of plane curves, under the assumption that they have the same tropicalization. We show that the set of tropical divisors that arise in this manner is a pure dimensional balanced polyhedral complex and compute its dimension. When the genus is at most 1, we show that all the tropical divisors that move in the expected dimension are realizable. As part of the proof, we introduce a combinatorial tool for explicitly constructing large families of realizable tropical divisors.
Let k be an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic p. We consider which finite groups G have the property that every faithful action of G on a connected smooth projective curve over k lifts to characteristic zero. Oort conjectured that cyclic groups have this property. We show that if a cyclic-by-p group G has this property, then G must be either cyclic or dihedral, with the exception of A_4 in characteristic 2. This proves one direction of a strong form of the Oort Conjecture.
We present a new algorithm for computing integral bases in algebraic function fields of one variable, or equivalently for constructing the normalization of a plane curve. Our basic strategy makes use of the concepts of localization and completion, together with the Chinese remainder theorem, to reduce the problem to the task of finding integral bases for the branches of each singularity of the curve. To solve the latter task, in turn, we work with suitably truncated Puiseux expansions. In contrast to van Hoeij's algorithm, which also relies on Puiseux expansions (but pursues a different strate…
Let K be an algebraically closed field which is complete with respect to a nontrivial, non-Archimedean valuation and let Λbe its value group. Given a smooth, proper, connected K-curve X and a skeleton Γof the Berkovich analytification X^\an, there are two natural real tori which one can consider: the tropical Jacobian Jac(Γ) and the skeleton of the Berkovich analytification Jac(X)^\an. We show that the skeleton of the Jacobian is canonically isomorphic to the Jacobian of the skeleton as principally polarized tropical abelian varieties. In addition, we show that the tropicalization of a classic…
The tropicalization of an algebraic variety X is a combinatorial shadow of X, which is sensitive to a closed embedding of X into a toric variety. Given a good embedding, the tropicalization can provide a lot of information about X. We construct two types of these good embeddings for Mumford curves: Fully faithful tropicalizations, which are embeddings such that the tropicalization admits a section to the associated Berkovich space $X^{an}$ of X, and smooth tropicalizations. We also show that a smooth curve that admits a smooth tropicalization is necessarily a Mumford curve. Our key tool is a v…
We study lifts of tropical bitangents to the tropicalization of a given complex algebraic curve together with their lifting multiplicities. Using this characterization, we show that generically all the seven bitangents of a smooth tropical plane quartic lift in sets of four to algebraic bitangents. We do this constructively, i.e. we give solutions for the initial terms of the coefficients of the bitangent lines. This is a step towards a tropical proof that a general smooth quartic admits 28 bitangent lines. The methods are also appropriate to count real bitangents, however the conditions to de…
For a family of Jacobians of smooth pointed curves there is a notion of tautological algebra. There is an action of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ on this algebra. We define and study a lifting of the Polishchuk operator, corresponding to $f\in \mathfrak{sl}_2$, on an algebra consisting of punctured Riemann surfaces. As an application we prove that a collection of tautological relations on moduli of curves, discovered by Faber and Zagier, come from a class of relations on the universal Jacobian.
We give applications of integral canonical models of orthogonal Shimura varieties and the Kuga-Satake morphism to the arithmetic of K3 surfaces over finite fields. We prove every K3 surface of finite height over a finite field admits a characteristic 0 lifting whose generic fiber is a K3 surface with complex multiplication. Combined with the results of Mukai and Buskin, we prove the Tate conjecture for the square of a K3 surface over a finite field. To obtain these results, we construct an analogue of Kisin's algebraic group for a K3 surface of finite height, and construct characteristic 0 lif…
Given an action of an affine algebraic group with only trivial characters on a factorial variety, we ask for categorical quotients. We characterize existence in the category of algebraic varieties. Moreover, allowing constructible sets as quotients, we obtain a more general existence result which, for example, settles the case of a finitely generated algebra of invariants. As an application, we provide a combinatorial GIT-type construction of categorial quotients for actions on, e.g. complete varieties with finitely generated Cox ring via lifting to the characteristic space.
We study the Oort groups for a prime p, i.e. finite groups G such that every G-Galois branched cover of smooth curves over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p lifts to a G-cover of curves in characteristic 0. We prove that all Oort groups lie in a particular class of finite groups that we characterize, with equality of classes under a conjecture about local liftings. We prove this equality unconditionally if the order of G is not divisible by 2p^2. We also treat the local lifting problem and relate it to the global problem.
A smooth curve in the real projective plane is hyperbolic if its ovals are maximally nested. By the Helton-Vinnikov Theorem, any such curve admits a definite symmetric determinantal representation. We use polynomial homotopy continuation to compute such representations numerically. Our method works by lifting paths from the space of hyperbolic polynomials to a branched cover in the space of pairs of symmetric matrices.
In this article we introduce the recently developed polymake extension TropicalQuarticCurves and its associated database entry in polyDB dealing with smooth tropical quartic curves. We report on algorithms implemented to analyze tropical bitangents and their lifting conditions over real closed valued fields. The new functions and data were used by the authors to provide a tropical proof of Plücker and Zeuthen's count of real bitangents to smooth quartic curves.
A smooth tropical quartic curve has seven tropical bitangent classes. Their shapes can vary within the same combinatorial type of curve. We study deformations of these shapes and we show that the conditions determined by Cueto and Markwig for lifting them to real bitangent lines are independent of the deformations. From this we deduce a tropical proof of Plücker and Zeuthen's count of the number of real bitangents to smooth plane quartic curves.
We study the problem of lifting curves from finite fields to number fields in a genus and gonality preserving way. More precisely, we sketch how this can be done efficiently for curves of gonality at most four, with an in-depth treatment of curves of genus at most five over finite fields of odd characteristic, including an implementation in Magma. We then use such a lift as input to an algorithm due to the second author for computing zeta functions of curves over finite fields using $p$-adic cohomology.
Let $X$ be an algebraic curve with an action of a finite group $G$ over a field $k$. We show that if the Hodge-de Rham short exact sequence of $X$ splits $G$-equivariantly then the action of $G$ on $X$ is weakly ramified. In particular, this generalizes the result of Köck and Tait for hyperelliptic curves. We discuss also converse statements and tie this problem to lifting coverings of curves to the ring of Witt vectors of length $2$.
We suggest a general method of computation of the homology of certain smooth covers $\hat{\mathcal{M}}_{g,1}(\mathbb{C})$ of moduli spaces $\mathcal{M}_{g,1}\br{\mathbb{C}}$ of pointed curves of genus $g$. Namely, we consider moduli spaces of algebraic curves with level $m$ structures. The method is based on the lifting of the Strebel-Penner stratification $\mathcal{M}_{g,1}\br{\mathbb{C}}$. We apply this method for $g\leq 2$ and obtain Betti numbers; these results are consistent with Penner and Harer-Zagier results on Euler characteristics.
