We survey our recent work on an extension of the theory of motivic integration, called arithmetic motivic integration. We developed this theory to understand how p-adic integrals of a very general type depend on p.
The paper studies categories of definable subassignments with some category equivalences to semi-algebraic and constructible subsets of arc spaces of algebraic varieties. These materials allow us to compare the motivic measure of Cluckers-Loeser and the one of Denef-Loeser in certain classes of definable subassignments.
We propose a suitable substitute for the classical Grothendieck ring of an algebraically closed field, in which any quasi-projective scheme is represented, while maintaining its non-reduced structure. This yields a more subtle invariant, called the schemic Grothendieck ring, in which we can formulate a form of integration resembling Kontsevich's motivic integration via arc schemes. In view of its more functorial properties, we can present a characteristic-free proof of the rationality of the geometric Igusa zeta series for certain hypersurfaces, thus generalizing the ground-breaking work on mo…
We construct a period regulator for motivic cohomology of an algebraic scheme over a subfield of the complex numbers. For the field of algebraic numbers we formulate a period conjecture for motivic cohomology by saying that this period regulator is surjective. Showing that a suitable Betti--de Rham realization of 1-motives is fully faithful we can verify this period conjecture in several cases. The divisibility properties of motivic cohomology imply that our conjecture is a neat generalization of the classical Grothendieck period conjecture for algebraic cycles on smooth and proper schemes. Th…
We show that Grothendieck's standard conjectures are implied by either of two other motivic conjectures: (a) by that of the existence of the motivic t-structure, and (b) by (a weak form of) Suslin's Lawson homology conjecture.
A motivic height zeta function associated to a family of varieties parametrised by a curve is the generating series of the classes, in the Grothendieck ring of varieties, of moduli spaces of sections of this family with varying degrees. This text is devoted to the study of the motivic height zeta function associated to a family of varieties with generic fiber having the structure of an equivariant compactification of a vector group. Our main theorem describes the convergence of this motivic height zeta function with respect to a topology on the Grothendieck ring of varieties coming from the th…
We construct a quasi-categorically enhanced Grothendieck six-functor formalism on schemes of finite type over the complex numbers. In addition to satisfying many of the same properties as M. Saito's derived categories of mixed Hodge modules, this new six-functor formalism receives canonical motivic realization functors compatible with Grothendieck's six functors on constructible objects.
We prove a formula, originally due to Feit and Fine, for the class of the commuting variety in the Grothendieck group of varieties. Our method, which uses a power structure on the Grothendieck group of stacks, allows us to prove several refinements and generalizations of the Feit-Fine formula. Our main application is to motivic Donaldson-Thomas theory.
We define a Grothendieck ring for basic real semialgebraic formulas, that is for systems of real algebraic equations and inequalities. In this ring the class of a formula takes into consideration the algebraic nature of the set of points satisfying this formula and contains as a ring the usual Grothendieck ring of real algebraic formulas. We give a realization of our ring that allows to express a class as a Z[1/2]- linear combination of classes of real algebraic formulas, so this realization gives rise to a notion of virtual Poincaré polynomial for basic semialgebraic formulas. We then define …
We prove, that Hausel's formula for the number of rational points of a Nakajima quiver variety over a finite field also holds in a suitable localization of the Grothendieck ring of varieties. In order to generalize the arithmetic harmonic analysis in his proof we use Grothendieck rings with exponentials as introduced by Cluckers-Loeser and Hrushovski-Kazhdan.
We develop a "motivic integration" version of the Poisson summation formula for function fields, with values in the Grothendieck ring of definable exponential sums. We also study division algebras over the function field, and obtain relations among the motivic Fourier transforms of a test function at different completions. We use these to prove, in a special case, a motivic version of a theorem of Deligne-Kazhdan-Vigneras.
Taking symmetric powers of varieties can be seen as a functor from the category of varieties to the category of varieties with an action by the symmetric group. We study a corresponding map between the Grothendieck groups of these categories. In particular, we derive a binomial formula and use it to give explicit expressions for the classes of universal quasi-split tori in the equivariant Grothendieck group of varieties.
This paper proves the Beilinson-Soul{é} vanishing conjecture for motives attached to the moduli spaces of curves of genus 0 with n marked points. As part of the proof, it is also proved that these motives are mixed Tate. As a consequence of Levine's work, one obtains then well defined categories of mixed Tate motives over the moduli spaces of curves . It is shown that morphisms between moduli spaces forgetting marked points and embedding as boundary components induce functors between those categories and how tangential bases points fit in these functorialities. Tannakian formalism attaches gro…
We study the motivic Grothendieck group of algebraic varieties from the point of view of stable birational geometry. In particular, we obtain a counter-example to a conjecture of M. Kapranov on the rationality of motivic zeta-function.
Making use of the recent theory of noncommutative motives, we construct a new motivic measure, which we call the Tits' motivic measure. As a first application, we prove that two Severi-Brauer varieties (or more generally twisted Grassmannian varieties), associated to central simple algebras of period 2, have the same Grothendieck class if and only if they are isomorphic. As a second application, we show that if two Severi-Brauer varieties, associated to central simple algebras of period 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, have the same Grothendieck class, then they are necessarily birational. As a third applicat…
Michael Gromov has recently initiated what he calls ``symbolic algebraic geometry", in which objects are proalgebraic varieties: a proalgebraic variety is by definition the projective limit of a projective system of algebraic varieties. In this paper we introduce characteristic classes of proalgebraic varieties, using Grothendieck transformations of Fulton--MacPherson's Bivariant Theory, modeled on the construction of MacPherson's Chern class transformation of proalgebraic varieties. We show that a proalgebraic version of the Euler--Poincaré characteristic with values in the Grothendieck ring …
We formulate and prove an analog of Poonen's finite-field Bertini theorem with Taylor conditions that holds in the Grothendieck ring of varieties. This gives a broad generalization of the work of Vakil-Wood, who treated the case of smooth hypersurface sections. In fact, our techniques give analogs in motivic statistics of all known results in arithmetic statistics that have been proven using Poonen's sieve, including work of Bucur-Kedlaya on complete intersections and Erman-Wood on semi-ample Bertini theorems. A key ingredient is the use of motivic Euler products, as introduced by the first au…
Combining work of Peyre, Colliot-Thélène and Voisin, we give the first example of a finite group $G$ such that the motivic class of its classifying stack $BG$ in Ekedahl's Grothendieck ring of stacks over $\mathbb{C}$ is non-trivial and $BG$ has trivial unramified Brauer group.
Let $\mathfrak{Var}_k^G$ denote the category of pairs $(X,σ)$, where $X$ is a variety over $k$ and $σ$ is a group action on $X$. We define the Grothendieck ring for varieties with group actions as the free abelian group of isomorphism classes in the category $\mathfrak{Var}_k^G$ modulo a cutting and pasting relation. The multiplication in this ring is defined by the fiber product of varieties. This allows for motivic zeta-functions for varieties with group actions to be defined. This is a formal power series $\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}[\text{Sym}^n (X,σ)]t^n$ with coefficients in the Grothendieck rin…
We prove a trace formula in stable motivic homotopy theory over a general base scheme, equating the trace of an endomorphism of a smooth proper scheme with the "Euler characteristic integral" of a certain cohomotopy class over its scheme of fixed points. When the base is a field and the fixed points are étale, we compute this integral in terms of Morel's identification of the ring of endomorphisms of the motivic sphere spectrum with the Grothendieck-Witt ring. In particular, we show that the Euler characteristic of an étale algebra corresponds to the class of its trace form in the Grothendieck…
Let X be a geometrically split, geometrically irreducible variety over a field F satisfying Rost nilpotence principle. Consider a field extension E/F and a finite field K. We provide in this note a motivic tool giving sufficient conditions for so-called outer motives of direct summands of the Chow motive of X_E with coefficients in K to be lifted to the base field. This going down result has been used S. Garibaldi, V. Petrov and N. Semenov to give a complete classification of the motivic decompositions of projective homogeneous varieties of inner type E_6 and to answer a conjecture of Rost and…
Given a small simplicial category $\C$ whose underlying ordinary category is equipped with a Grothendieck topology $τ$, we construct a model structure on the category of simplicially enriched presheaves on $\C$ where the weak equivalences are the local weak equivalences of the underlying (non-enriched) simplicial presheaves. We show that this model category is a $t$-complete model topos and describe the Grothendieck topology $[τ]$ on the homotopy category of $\C$ that corresponds to this model topos. After we first review a proof showing that the motivic homotopy theory is not a model topos, w…
We compute the class of the classifying stack of the special orthogonal group in the Grothendieck ring of stacks, and check that it is equal to the multiplicative inverse of the class of the group.
Already in the 1960s Grothendieck understood that one could obtain an almost entirely satisfactory theory of motives over a finite field when one assumes the full Tate conjecture. In this note we prove a similar result for motivic complexes. In particular Beilinson's Q-algebra of "correspondences at the generic point" is then defined for all connected varieties. We compute this for all smooth projective varieties (hence also for varieties birational to such a variety).
Let K_0(V/X) be the relative Grothendieck group of varieties over X in obj(V), with V the category of (quasi-projective) algebraic (resp. compact complex analytic) varieties over a base field k. Then we constructed the motivic Hirzebruch class transformation in the algebraic context for k of characteristic zero and in the compact complex analytic context. It unifies the well-known three characteristic class transformations of singular varieties: MacPherson's Chern class, Baum-Fulton-MacPherson's Todd class and the L-class of Goresky-MacPherson and Cappell-Shaneson. In this paper we construct a…
We prove some results connecting the zeta functions of varieties over finite fields with the big Witt ring over $\mathbb Z$. We explore relations with motivic measures and a classical formula of Macdonald on invariants of symmetric products of a variety.
The motivic Hilbert zeta function of a variety is the generating function for classes in the Grothendieck ring of varieties of Hilbert schemes of points of the variety. In this paper, the motivic Hilbert zeta function of a reduced curve is shown to be rational.
Let K be a field. A positive motivic measure on the Grothendieck ring K_0(Var_K) is a homomorphism from K_0(Var_K) to the real numbers assigning a nonnegative value to every variety. In this note we show that the only positive motivic measures are the counting measures: measures on K_0(Var_{F_q}) which send a variety to its number of rational points over some fixed finite extension of F_q.
The main purpose of this article is to define a quadratic analog of the Chern character, the so-called Borel character, which identifies rational higher Grothendieck-Witt groups with a sum of rational MW-motivic cohomologies and rational motivic cohomologies. We also discuss the notion of ternary laws due to Walter, a quadratic analog of formal group laws, and compute what we call the additive ternary laws, associated with MW-motivic cohomology. Finally, we provide an application of the Borel character by showing that the Milnor-Witt K-theory of a field F embeds into suitable higher Grothendie…
The relative Grothendieck group $K_0(\m V/X)$ is the free abelian group generated by the isomorphism classes of complex algebraic varieties over $X$ modulo the "scissor relation". The motivic Hirzebruch class ${T_y}_*: K_0(\m V /X) \to H_*^{BM}(X) \otimes \bQ[y]$ is a unique natural transformation satisfying that for a nonsingular variety $X$ the value ${T_y}_*([X \xrightarrow {\op {id}_X} X])$ of the isomorphism class of the identity $X \xrightarrow {id_X} X$ is the Poincaré dual of the Hirzebruch cohomology class of the tangent bundle $TX$. It "unifies" the well-known three characteristic cl…
We generalize the motivic incarnation morphism from the theory of arithmetic integration to the relative case, where we work over a base variety S over a field k of characteristic zero. We develop a theory of constructible effective Chow motives over S, and we show how to associate a motive to any S-variety. We give a geometric proof of relative quantifier elimination for pseudo-finite fields, and we construct a morphism from the Grothendieck ring of the theory of pseudo-finite fields over S, to the tensor product of Q with the Grothendieck ring of constructible effective Chow motives. This mo…
Let k be a perfect field of characteristic different from two. We show that the filtration on the Grothendieck-Witt group GW(k) induced by the slice filtration for the sphere spectrum in the motivic stable homotopy category is the I-adic filtration, where I is the augmentation ideal in GW(k).
We describe an approach to the study of phase transitions in Potts models based on an estimate of the complexity of the locus of real zeros of the partition function, computed in terms of the classes in the Grothendieck ring of the affine algebraic varieties defined by the vanishing of the multivariate Tutte polynomial. We give completely explicit calculations for the examples of the chains of linked polygons and of the graphs obtained by replacing the polygons with their dual graphs. These are based on a deletion-contraction formula for the Grothendieck classes and on generating functions for…
We introduce a quotient of the Grothendieck ring of varieties by identifying classes of universally homeomorphic varieties. We show that the standard realization morphisms factor through this quotient, and we argue that it is the correct value ring for the theory of motivic integration on formal schemes and rigid varieties in mixed characteristic. The present note is an excerpt of a detailed survey paper which will be published in the proceedings of the conference "Motivic integration and its interactions with model theory and non-archimedean geometry" (ICMS, 2008).
We prove a formula expressing the motivic integral (\cite{ls}) of a K3 surface over $\bC((t))$ with semi-stable reduction in terms of the associated limit Hodge structure. Secondly, for every smooth variety over a non-archimedean field we define an analogue of the monodromy pairing, constructed by Grothendieck in the case of Abelian varieties, and prove that our monodromy pairing is a birational invariant of the variety. Finally, we propose a conjectural formula for the motivic integral of maximally degenerated K3 surfaces over an arbitrary non-archimedean field and prove this conjecture for K…
It is shown that if the generalized Hodge conjecture, or some weaker form of it, holds for a Calabi-Yau variety then it holds for any Calabi-Yau variety birationally equivalent to it. The key idea is to construct suitable homomorphisms between the Grothendieck group of varieties and the Grothendieck group of the exact category of filtered Hodge structures. This along with motivic integration yields the first statement.
Let $F$ be a field of characteristic zero admitting a biquadratic field extension. We give an example of a torus $G$ over $F$ whose classifying stack $BG$ is stably rational and such that $\{BG\}\{G\}\neq 1$ in the Grothendieck ring of algebraic stacks over $F$. We also give an example of a finite étale group scheme $A$ over $F$ such that $BA$ is stably rational and $\{BA\}\neq 1$.
For a quasiprojective variety S, we define a category CHM(S) of pure Chow motives over S. Assuming conjectures of Grothendieck and Murre, we show that the decomposition theorem holds in CHM(S). As a consequence, the intersection complex of S makes sense as an object IS of CHM(S). In the forthcoming part II we will give an unconditional definition of intersection Chow groups and study some of their properties.
Let $K_0(\mathrm{Var}_{\mathbb{Q}})[1/\mathbb{L}]$ denote the Grothendieck ring of $\mathbb{Q}$-varieties with the Lefschetz class inverted. We show that there exists a K3 surface X over $\mathbb{Q}$ such that the motivic zeta function $ζ_X(t) := \sum_n [\mathrm{Sym}^n X]t^n$ regarded as an element in $K_0(\mathrm{Var}_{\mathbb{Q}})[1/\mathbb{L}][[t]]$ is not a rational function in $t$, thus disproving a conjecture of Denef and Loeser.
We propose a suitable substitute for the classical Grothendieck ring of an algebraically closed field, in which any quasi-projective scheme is represented, while maintaining its non-reduced structure. This yields a more subtle invariant, called the schemic Grothendieck ring, in which we can formulate a form of integration resembling Kontsevich's motivic integration via arc schemes. Whereas the original construction was via definability, we have translated in this paper everything into a topos-theoretic framework.
We reformulate the construction of Kontsevich's completion and use Lawson homology to define many new motivic invariants. We show that the dimensions of subspaces generated by algebraic cycles of the cohomology groups of two $K$-equivalent varieties are the same, which implies that several conjectures of algebraic cycles are $K$-statements. We define stringy functions which enable us to ask stringy Grothendieck standard conjecture and stringy Hodge conjecture. We prove a projective bundle theorem in morphic cohomology for trivial bundles over any normal quasi-projective varieties.
These notes are an account of a series of lectures I gave at the LMS-CMI Research School `Homotopy Theory and Arithmetic Geometry: Motivic and Diophantine Aspects', in July 2018, at the Imperial College London. The goal of these notes is to see how motives may be used to enhance cohomological methods, giving natural ways to prove independence of $\ell$ results for traces and zeta-functions, and constructions of characteristic classes (as $0$-cycles). This leads to the Grothendieck-Lefschetz formula, of which we give a new motivic proof. There are also a few additions to what have been told in …
We consider the abelian group $PT$ generated by quasi-equivalence classes of pretriangulated DG categories with relations coming from semi-orthogonal decompositions of corresponding triangulated categories. We introduce an operation of "multiplication" $\bullet$ on the collection of DG categories which makes this abelian group into a commutative ring. A few applications are considered: representability of "standard" functors between derived categories of coherent sheaves on smooth projective varieties and a construction of an interesting motivic measure.
We prove that the moduli spaces of twisted $\mathrm{SL}_n$ and $\mathrm{PGL}_n$-Higgs bundles on a smooth projective curve have the same (stringy) class in the Grothendieck ring of rational Chow motives. On the level of Hodge numbers this was conjectured by Hausel and Thaddeus, and recently proven by Groechenig, Ziegler and the second author. To adapt their argument, which relies on p-adic integration, we use a version of motivic integration with values in rational Chow motives and the geometry of Néron models to evaluate such integrals on Hitchin fibers.
The apparatus of motivic stable homotopy theory provides a notion of Euler characteristic for smooth projective varieties, valued in the Grothendieck-Witt ring of the base field. Previous work of the first author and recent work of Déglise-Jin-Khan establishes a "Gauß-Bonnet formula" relating this Euler characteristic to pushforwards of Euler classes in motivic cohomology theories. In this paper, we apply this formula to SL-oriented motivic cohomology theories to obtain explicit characterizations of this Euler characteristic. The main new input is a unicity result for pushforward maps in SL-or…
Let $G$ be a finite group, and let $\{B_{\mathbb{C}}G\}$ the class of its classifying stack $B_{\mathbb{C}}G$ in Ekedahl's Grothendieck ring of algebraic $\mathbb{C}$-stacks $K_0(\operatorname{Stacks}_{\mathbb{C}})$. We show that if $B_{\mathbb{C}}G$ has the mixed Tate property, the invariants $H^i(\{B_{\mathbb{C}}G\})$ defined by T. Ekedahl are zero for all $i\neq 0$. We also extend Ekedahl's construction of these invariants to fields of positive characteristic.