Given a generic field extension F/k of degree n>3 (i.e. the Galois group of the normal closure of F is isomorphic to the symmetric group $S_n$), we prove that the norm torus, defined as the kernel of the norm map $N:R_{F/k}(G_m)\to\G_m$, is not rational over k.
We obtain results on the so-called Andre-Pink-Zannier conjecture which is a special case of a the Zilber-Pink conjecture on unlikely intersections in Shimura varieties. Our methods rely on an ergodic theorem of Richard-Zamojski and we are able to obtain stronger conclusions that those of the Andre-Pink-Zannier conjecture in the special case we consider. We work under the assumption of the S-Shafarevich conjecture and S-semisimplicity conjecture which hold for Shimura varieties of abelian type.
We prove that a polynomial map is invertible if and only if some associated differential ring homomorphism is bijective. To this end, we use a theorem of Crespo and Hajto linking the invertibility of polynomial maps with Picard-Vessiot extensions of partial differential fields, the theory of strongly normal extensions as presented by Kovacic and the characterization of Picard-Vessiot extensions in terms of tensor products given by Levelt.
We focus on the positive dimensional fibres of the Prym map $\mathcal{P}_{g,r}$. We present a direct procedure to investigate infinitely many examples of positive dimensional fibres. Such procedure uses families of Galois coverings of the line admitting a 2-sheeted Galois intermediate quotient. Then we generalize to families of Galois coverings of the line admitting a Galois intermediate quotient of higher degree and we show that the higher degree analogue of the aforementioned procedure gives all the known counterexamples to a conjecture by Xiao on the relative irregularity of a fibration.
In this paper, we survey the major contributions of Abhyankar to the development of the theory of fundamental groups and Galois covers in positive characteristic. We first discuss the current status of four conjectures of Abhyankar about Galois covers in positive characteristic. Then we discuss research directions inspired by Abhyankar's work, including many open problems.
The Tate conjecture has two parts: i) Tate classes are linear combination of algebraic classes, ii) semisimplicity of Galois representations (for smooth projective varieties). B. Moonen proved that i) implies ii) in characteristic 0, using $p$-adic Hodge theory. We show that an unconditional result lies behind this implication: the {\it observability} of arithmetic monodromy groups of geometric origin (in any characteristic) - which leads to a sharpening of Moonen's result. We also discuss another aspect of the Tate conjecture related to the transcendence of $p$-adic periods.
Using Calegari's result on the Fontaine-Mazur conjecture, we study the irreducibility of pure, regular, rank 3 weakly compatible systems of self-dual l-adic representations. As a consequence, we prove that the Tate conjecture holds for a family of elliptic surfaces defined over Q with geometric genus bigger than 1.
We prove in this paper the Ax-Lindemann-Weierstrass theorem for all mixed Shimura varieties and discuss the lower bounds for Galois orbits of special points of mixed Shimura varieties. In particular we reprove a result of Silverberg in a different approach. Then combining these results we prove the André-Oort conjecture for any mixed Shimura variety whose pure part is a subvariety of A_6^n.
We show that the Vojta (or Hall-Lang) conjecture implies that the arboreal Galois representations in a 1-parameter family of quadratic polynomials are surjective if and only if they surject onto some finite and uniform quotient. As an application, we use the Vojta conjecture, our uniformity theorem over $\mathbb{Q}(t)$, and Hilbert's irreducibility theorem to prove that the prime divisors of many quadratic orbits have density zero.
With an explicit example, we confirm a conjecture by Neumann and Wahl that there exist cusps with no Galois cover by a complete intersection. Some computational techniques are reviewed, and a method for deciding whether a given cusp has a complete intersection Galois cover is developed.
We introduce $\ell$-Galois special subvarieties as an $\ell$-adic analog of the Hodge-theoretic notion of a special subvariety. The Mumford-Tate conjecture predicts that both notions are equivalent. We study some properties of these subvarieties and prove this equivalence for subvarieties satisfying a simple monodromy condition. As applications, we show that the $\ell$-Galois exceptional locus is a countable union of algebraic subvarieties and, if the derived group of the generic Mumford-Tate group of a family is simple, its part of positive period dimension coincides with the Hodge locus of p…
In this mostly expository note we explain how Nori's theory of motives achieves the aim of establishing a Galois theory of periods, at least under the period conjecture. We explain and compare different notions periods, different versions of the period conjecture and view the evidence by explaining the examples of Artin motive, mixed Tate motives and 1-motives.
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…
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 …
We consider the canonical representation of the absolute Galois group of the rational numbers in the outer automorphism group of the pro-p completion of the fundamental group of the projective line minus 0,1, and infinity. Deligne has conjectured that a certain graded Z_p-Lie algebra arising from this representation becomes a free p-adic Lie algebra on one element in each odd degree starting with 3 when tensored with the Q_p. We construct good choices of these elements and use them to examine the structure of the Z_p-Lie algebra. In particular, we consider how its structure depends upon the re…
We consider the Kisin variety associated to a $n$-dimensional absolutely irreducible mod $p$ Galois representation $\barρ$ of a $p$-adic field $K$ and a cocharacter $μ$. Kisin conjectured that the Kisin variety is connected in this case. We show that Kisin's conjecture holds if $K$ is totally ramfied with $n=3$ or $μ$ is of a very particular form. As an application, we also get a connectedness result for the deformation ring associated to $\barρ$ of given Hodge-Tate weights. We also give counterexamples to show Kisin's conjecture does not hold in general.
We prove a portion of a conjecture of B. Conrad, F. Diamond, and R. Taylor, yielding some new cases of the Fontaine-Mazur conjectures, specifically, the modularity of certain potentially Barsotti-Tate Galois representations. The proof follows the template of Wiles, Taylor-Wiles, and Breuil-Conrad-Diamond-Taylor, and relies on a detailed study of the descent, across tamely ramified extensions, of finite flat group schemes over the integers of a local field. This makes crucial use of the filtered ϕ_1-modules of C. Breuil.
This paper treats what we call `weak geometric liftings' of Galois representations associated to abelian varieties. This notion can be seen as a generalization of the idea of lifting a Galois representation along an isogeny of algebraic groups. The weaker notion only takes into account an isogeny of the derived groups and disregards the centres of the groups in question. The weakly lifted representations are required to be geometric in the sense of a conjecture of Fontaine and Mazur. The conjecture in question states that any irreducible geometric representation is a twist of a subquotient of …
We survey some recent progress on generalizations of conjectures of Serre concerning the cohomology of arithmetic groups, focusing primarily on the "weight" aspect. This is intimately related to (generalizations of) a conjecture of Breuil and Mézard relating the geometry of potentially semistable deformation rings to modular representation theory. Recently, B. Levin, S. Morra, and the authors established these conjectures in tame generic contexts by constructing projective varieties (local models) in mixed characteristic whose singularities model, in generic cases, those of tamely potentially …
A theorem of Grothendieck tells us that if the Galois action on the Tate module of an abelian variety factors through a smaller field, then the abelian variety, up to isogeny and finite extension of the base, is itself defined over the smaller field. Inspired by this, we give a Galois descent datum for a motive $H$ over a field by asking that the Galois action on an $\ell$-adic realisation factor through a smaller field. We conjecture that this descent datum is effective, that is if a motive $H$ satisfies the above criterion, then it must itself descend to the smaller field. We prove this conj…
Let $S$ be a Shimura variety and let $h$ be a Weil height function on $S$. We conjecture that the heights of special points in $S$ are discriminant negligible. Assuming this conjecture to be true, we prove that the sizes of the Galois orbits of special points grow as a fixed power of their discriminant (an invariant we will define in the text). In the case of Shimura varieties of abelian type, the height bound holds by the recently proved averaged Colmez formula, and our theorem gives a new proof of Tsimerman's Galois lower bound in this case. The main novelty is that our approach avoids the u…
For any Shimura variety of Hodge type with hyperspecial level at a prime $p$ and a lisse sheaf on it, we prove a formula, conjectured by Kottwitz \cite{Kottwitz90}, for the Lefschetz number of an arbitrary Frobenius-twisted Hecke correspondence acting on the compactly supported étale cohomology and verify another conjecture of Kottwitz \cite{Kottwitz90} on the stabilization of that formula. The main ingredients of our proof of the formula are a recent work of Kisin \cite{Kisin17} on Langlands-Rapoport conjecture and the theory of Galois gerbs developed by Langlands and Rapoport \cite{LR87}. Es…
This paper verifies Abhyankar's Inertia Conjecture for certain sporadic groups $G$ in particular characteristics by showing that all possible inertia groups occur for $G$-Galois covers of the affine line. For a larger set of sporadic groups, all but finitely many possible ramification invariants are shown to occur. In particular, we prove that all but eight of the possible ramification invariants are realizable for $\text{M}_{11}$-Galois covers of the affine line.
We construct projective varieties in mixed characteristic whose singularities model, in generic cases, those of tamely potentially crystalline Galois deformation rings for unramified extensions of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ with small regular Hodge-Tate weights. We establish several significant facts about their geometry including a unibranch property at special points and a representation theoretic description of the irreducible components of their special fibers. We derive from these geometric results a number of local and global consequences: the Breuil-Mézard conjecture in arbitrary dimension for tame…
In this paper we compute the Galois cohomology of the pro-p completion of primitive link groups. Here, a primitive link group is the fundamental group of a tame link in the 3-sphere whose linking number diagram is irreducible modulo p (e.g. none of the linking numbers is divisible by p). The result is that (with Z/pZ-coefficients) the Galois cohomology is naturally isomorphic to the Z/pZ-cohomology of the discrete link group. The main application of this result is that for such groups the Baum-Connes conjecture or the Atiyah conjecture are true for every finite extension (or even every element…
I show that a conjecture of Joshi-Rajan on primes of Hodge-Witt reduction and in particular a conjecture of Jean-Pierre Serre on primes of good, ordinary reduction for an abelian variety over a number field follows from a certain conjecture on Galois rep- resentations which may perhaps be easier to prove (and I prove this conjecture for abelian compatible systems of a suitable type). This reduction (to a conjecture about certain sys- tems of Galois representations) is based on a new slope estimate for non Hodge-Witt abelian varieties. In particular for any abelian variety over a number field w…
We show that the statement analogous to the Mumford-Tate conjecture for abelian varieties holds for 1-motives on unipotent parts. This is done by comparing the unipotent part of the associated Hodge group and the unipotent part of the image of the absolute Galois group with the unipotent part of the motivic fundamental group. Contains an appendix by P. Deligne. In this version: Minor corrections here and there. The Main result about the image of the Galois representations is now enriched by an adelic statement.
Let K be a number field and A an abelian variety over K. We are interested in the following conjecture of Morita: if the Mumford-Tate group of A does not contain unipotent Q-rational points then A has potentially good reduction at any discrete place of K. The Mumford-Tate group is an object of analytical nature whereas having good reduction is an arithmetical notion, linked to the ramification of Galois representations. This conjecture has been proved by Morita for particular abelian varieties with many endomorphisms (called of PEL type). Noot obtained results for abelian varieties without non…
Let X be a smooth projective curve of genus >1 over a field K which is finitely generated over the rationals. The section conjecture in Grothendieck's anabelian geometry says that the sections of the canonical projection from the arithmetic fundamental group of X onto the absolute Galois group of K are (up to conjugation) in one-to-one correspondence with K-rational points of X. The birational variant conjectures a similar correspondence where the fundamental group is replaced by the absolute Galois group of the function field K(X). The present paper proves the birational section conjecture fo…
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 Frey--Mazur conjecture states that an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ is determined up to isogeny by its $p$-torsion Galois representation for $p\geq 17$. We study a geometric analog of this conjecture, and show that the map from isogeny classes of "fake elliptic curves"---abelian surfaces with quaternionic multiplication---to their $p$-torsion Galois representations is one-to-one over function fields of small genus complex curves for sufficiently large $p$ relative to the genus.
For an odd prime $p$ satisfying Vandiver's conjecture, we give explicit formulae for the action of the absolute Galois group $G_{\mathbb{Q}(ζ_p)}$ on the homology of the degree $p$ Fermat curve, building on work of Anderson. Further, we study the invariants and the first Galois cohomology group which are associated with obstructions to rational points on the Fermat curve.
This article develops, via the perspective of (arithmetic) algebraic geometry and category theory, different aspects of geometry of information. First, we describe in the terms of Eilenberg--Moore algebras over a Giry monad, the collection $Cap_n$ of all probability distributions on the measurable space $(Ω_n, \mathcal{A})$ (where $Ω$ is discrete with $n$ issues) and it turns out that there exists an embedding relation of Segre type among the product of $Cap_n$'s. We unravel hidden symmetries of these type of embeddings and show that there exists a hypercubic relation. Secondly, we show that t…