Finiteness of for some Elliptic Curves of Analytic Rank
Abstract
We prove the finiteness of (i.e., the BSD conjecture) for a class of elliptic curves over function fields. This is an application of a more general theorem that the Tate conjecture in codimension is “generically true” for mod reductions of complex projective varieties with , under a mild assumption on moduli. We also prove the Tate conjecture for a class of algebraic surfaces of general type with .
1 Introduction
For an elliptic curve over a global field, it is conjectured that the Tate-Shafarevich group is finite. This is known in many cases, and in particular for function fields, when the analytic rank of is at most ([Ulmer, Qiu, Kolyvagin]). However, there are very few examples when the conjecture is known when the analytic rank is . For function fields the only previously known examples correspond to elliptic surfaces which are rational, K3 ([ASD]), or dominated by products of curves (e.g., [UlmerLargeRank]).
One of the purposes of this paper is to prove this finiteness for a new class of examples in the function field case. Let be a finite field of characteristic Then we show
Theorem A.
Assume . Let be a minimal elliptic surface (with a zero section) over a smooth proper -curve of genus and be the fiber over the generic point . Suppose that
-
(i)
;
-
(ii)
all geometric fibers of are irreducible.
Then is finite.
Here denotes the height of , i.e., the degree of the fundamental line bundle . We remark that by the Shioda-Tate formula, condition (ii) is equivalent to , where is the Néron-Severi group of and is the Mordell-Weil group of . Moreover, on the coarse moduli space of satisfying all conditions except possibly (ii) in the theorem, (ii) is generically satisfied, and there are infinitely many -dimensional families of such that up to replacing by a finite extension (see (7.4.5)).
For function fields, it is known that the finiteness of is equivalent to the BSD conjecture ([KatoTrihan, MilneAT]), which is further equivalent to the Tate conjecture for the corresponding elliptic surfaces. In fact, Thm A is obtained by refining a special case of a more general theorem on the Tate conjecture. To explain this, we consider arithmetic families of the following type: Suppose that is a field of characteristic and is a smooth connected -variety. We say that a smooth projective morphism is a -family if for every geometric point , the fiber is connected, (i.e., ), and the Kodaira-Spencer map
(1) |
is nontrivial. Our general theorem states:
Theorem B.
Let be a connected and separated scheme over which is smooth and of finite type and let be a smooth projective morphism with geometrically connected fibers. If the restriction of to is a -family, then for , every fiber of over a point satisfies the Tate conjecture in codimension , i.e., for every prime , the Chern class map
is surjective, where is a geometric point over .111Over a finite field there is also a crystalline version of the Tate conjecture, which in codimension is known to be equivalent to the -adic version (see [Morrow, Prop. 4.1]).
The above theorem is roughly saying that under a mild assumption, the Tate conjecture in codimension is “generically true” in an arithmetic family of varieties with . Clearly, it is both a positive characteristic analogue of Moonen’s main result in [Moonen], and a generalization of the Tate conjecture for K3 surfaces, for which people made great progress in the past decade (e.g., [MPTate, Maulik, Charles]). The base scheme above should be thought of as the moduli of varieties of a certain type. Note that we do not require in the theorem above that is a closed point—it is allowed to have positive transcendence degree over . Also, although the above theorem is non-effective in , for concretely given families we often can make it effective, as in the case of Thm A. To illustrate this, we also analyze a class of surfaces of general type:
Theorem C.
Assume that is a field finitely generated over for . Let be a minimal smooth projective geometrically connected surface over . Let denote its canonical divisor, the geometric genus , and the irregularity . If , and is ample, then satisfies the Tate conjecture.
We remark that condition (ii) in Thm A is an analogue of the condition “ is ample” above. Over , surfaces with the above invariants were classified by Todorov and Catanese ([Todorov, Catanese0]). They are simply connected, have a coarse moduli space of dimension and were among the first examples of surfaces for which both the local and the global Torelli theorems fail ([Catanese]).
Sketch of Proofs
We first explain how to prove Theorem B. We build on the overall strategy of Madapusi-Pera [MPTate], which has two main steps. The first is to construct an integral period morphism , where is the canonical integral model of a Shimura variety defined by a suitable special orthogonal group .222For the exposition of ideas, we temporarily suppress Hermitian symmetric domains and level structures from the notation of Shimura varieties. Up to passing to its spinor cover, is equipped with a family of abelian schemes . The second is to construct, for each geometric point and , a morphism , where is a distinguished subspace of . Then the Tate conjecture for follows from a variant of Tate’s theorem for . As a crucial step, Madapusi-Pera proved that is étale. This boils down to the geometric fact that a K3 surface has unobstructed deformation and . Unfortunately, this is rarely true when is not a close relative of a hyperkähler variety.
The main contribution of our paper is a method to remove the dependence of the above strategy on any good local property of (not even flatness). Indeed, the condition on the Kodaira-Spencer map contained in the definition of a -family just amounts to asking , so even the situation is allowed in Thm B. Below we explain in more detail the difficulties in extending the two steps above and how to overcome them.
(1.0.1)
It is not hard to construct a period morphism over , as the target is a moduli of variations of Hodge structures with some additional data. As in [MPTate], the idea to construct is to descend to a morphism over , and then appeal to the extension property of . If for every , the motive defined by is an abelian motive (e.g., in the K3 case), then one shows that the action of on -points are -equivariant, so that descends to just as in [MPTate].
To treat the general case, we absorb inputs from Moonen’s work [Moonen]. Let be a point lying over the generic point of , and let be the orthogonal complement of -classes in . Let be the endomorphism algebra of the Hodge structure , which is known to be either a totally real or a CM field. In the latter case, one can still show that is abelian for each (see (2.2.7)), so that the argument of [MPTate] still applies. In the former case, we need to consider an auxiliary Shimura subvariety , defined by the Weil restriction of a special orthogonal group over .
Up to replacing by a connected étale cover and by a lift, the restriction of to factors through a morphism , where is the connected component of containing . We will show that the field of definition of always contains . Interestingly, to descend to it suffices to descend to . The trick is to consider the left adjoint to the base change functor from -schemes to -schemes. To show that descends to , consider the submotive of defined by . When is odd, although we do not know that (or equivalently ) is abelian, Moonen’s work [Moonen] tells us that (a slight variant of) “the -norm” is abelian. This allows us to show that descends to because considering amounts to considering a different faithful representation of . As we document in a separate reference file [YangSystem], under some hypotheses the canonical models of Shimura varieties of abelian type over their reflex fields have a moduli interpretation attached to any faithful representation. When is even, some adaptation is needed, which we omit here.
(1.0.2)
Next, we explain how to construct , where the main novelty of our method lies. As in [MPTate], the key to construct is to find, for each , a characteristic point on lifting , such that (i) deforms to and (ii) comes from a lifting of via . The existence of which satisfies (i) was already shown in [CSpin]. When is étale (or at least smooth), (ii) is then automatically satisfied. This is where [MPTate] crucially relies on the étaleness of .
The challenge to generalize this, especially when , is that there is no general way to characterize locally the image of in , so for any given one cannot decide directly whether it satisfies (ii) or not. Indeed, this is essentially a local Schottky problem, which is famously hard. To overcome this, we revisit Deligne’s insight for [Del02, Thm 1.6] but replace the local crystalline analysis by a global and topological argument.
Pretend for a moment that and are both connected, where is the (separably closed) field defining , and set . Let and be geometric generic points over and respectively. Pick a prime and restrict to . Suppose for the sake of contradiction that for some , there is no lifting which satisfies (i) and (ii). Then using that the deformation of is controlled by a single equation, we can show that deforms along the formal completion of at , and hence gives rise to an element of . This further induces an element in which is stabilized by an open subgroup of . On the other hand, we show using the theorem of the fixed part that all elements of stabilized by an open subgroup of come from . Therefore, to derive a constradiction it suffices to show that does not have more “-invariants” than .
Using Hironaka’s resolution of singularities and a spreading out argument, we can find an open subscheme of such that admits a compactification whose boundary is a relative normal crossing divisor. Then we apply Grothendieck’s specialization theorems for tame fundamental group and Abhyankar’s lemma to show that indeed cannot have more “-invariants” than , when .333We thank Aaron Landesman for pointing out to us the applicability of Abhyankar’s lemma, which simplifies our original argument. This proves Thm B.
(1.0.3)
To prove Theorem A and C, we need to avoid the spreading out argument above. Although compactifying moduli spaces is in general a hard geometric problem, one can find for in question a partial compactification. That is, a morphism and a smooth proper over such that is an open subscheme of . Then we can find lots of smooth proper curves in . If the boundary is generically reduced modulo , then we can find a curve on which deforms to characteristic such that by looking at the curve we can already prove that does not have more “-invariants” than . Of course, such curve needs to be chosen wisely, and we do this by repeatedly applying the Baire category theorem. We will also need to satisfy a stronger condition, namely , as opposed to just . This is known to hold for the surfaces in question.
The boundary is essentially a discriminant scheme, i.e., extends to a family over , and is precisely the locus where the extension fails to be smooth. In general, it is possible for a discriminant scheme over to be generically non-reduced modulo a certain prime (cf. [Saitodisc, Thm 4.2]), so the task is to determine an effective range of for which this does not happen. Drawing ideas from enumerative geometry, we show that this happens only when a general fiber over is “more singular” than that over . To exclude this possibility when for the surfaces in Thm C, it suffices to adapt Katz’ results on Lefschetz pencils. Doing this for Thm A is much more involved. In particular, we need to develop some nonlinear Bertini theorems (see §7.2) tailored to handle Weierstrass equations, the key input being Kodaira’s classification for the singular fibers in an elliptic fibration.
Remark (1.0.4).
Recently Fu and Moonen proved the Tate conjecture for Gushel-Mukai varieties in characteristic . The middle cohomology of these varieties behaves like that of a K3 surface up to a Tate twist. An earlier version of the paper also discussed these varieties. For our method, these varieties can be treated in a similar way as the surfaces in Thm C. However, as Fu-Moonen [FuMoonen] gave much more thorough treatment of these varieties and proved that the relevant integral period morphism is indeed smooth, we removed the section from the current version. In general, it is hard to determine whether is smooth integrally even when is smooth, as one can tell from [FuMoonen], but when this can be achieved, has many more potential applications than the divisorial Tate conjecture (e.g., CM lifting and the Tate conjecture for self-correspondences, as shown in [IIK]).
On the other hand, our main purpose is to deal with the situation when the smoothness of cannot be hoped for. In particular, Thm B implies that the characteristic counterparts of the surfaces in Moonen’s list [Moonen, Thm 9.4] satisfy the Tate conjecture for , and we expect that our methods for the refinements Thm A and C can be adapted to make Thm B effective for most classes of these surfaces.
Organization of Paper
In section 2, we review and mildly extend Moonen’s results in [Moonen] on the motives of fibers of -families. In particular, we recap the norm functors used in loc. cit. In section 3, we discuss the moduli interpretations of Shimura varieties of abelian type over their reflex fields, as documented in [YangSystem], and recap the integral models of orthogonal Shimura varieties from [CSpin]. In section 4, we construct the period morphisms for -families in characteristic , using results from sections 2 and 3. In section 5, we prove Thm B after giving a more effective version (see (5.3.3)). In section 6, we set up some basic tools to analyze deformation of curves on parameter spaces, including applications of the Baire category theorem. Finally, in section 7 and 8, we use tools from section 6 as well as (5.3.3) to prove Thm A and C respectively. In particular, in section 7 we study the geometry of natural parameter spaces of elliptic surfaces, which we hope to be of independent interest.
(1.0.5)
Finally we introduce some notations and conventions.
(a) Let be a morphism between schemes. If is another morphism, denote by the base change and by the set of morphisms as -schemes. By a geometric fiber of , we mean for some geometric point . If is a point (resp. geometric point) on a scheme , we write for its residue field (resp. field of definition). By a variety over a field we mean a scheme which is reduced, separated and of finite type over .
(b) The letters and will always denote some prime numbers and unless otherwise noted. We write for the profinite completion of and for its prime-to- part. Define and . If is a perfect field of characteristic , we write for its ring of Witt vectors.
(c) For a field of characteristic , we consider a quadratic form on a finite dimensional -vector space simultaneously a symmetric bilinear pairing such that for every .
(d) For a finite free module over a ring , we write the direct sum of all the -modules which can be formed from by taking duals, tensor products,
symmetric powers and exterior powers. We also use this notation for sheaves of modules on some Grothendieck topology whenever it makes an obvious sense.
(e) We use the following abbreviations: VHS for “variations of Hodge structures”, LHS (resp. RHS) for “left (resp. right) hand side”, and ODP for “ordinary double point”. Unless otherwise noted, the local system in a VHS is a local system of -vector spaces. Moreover, we always assume that the VHS is pure, i.e., it is a direct sum of those pure of some weight (or the weight filtration is split).
2 Preliminaries
2.1 Motives and Norm Functors
(2.1.1)
Let be a field of characteristic . We denote by the neutral -linear Tannakian category of motives over with morphisms defined by absolute Hodge correspondences (cf. [Pan94, §2] where it is denoted by ). We have the Tate objects for every in this category. For any object , we write for and by an absolute Hodge cycle on we mean a morphism .
Following [MPTate, §2], we denote by the -adic realization functor which sends to the category of finite dimensional -vector spaces with an action of , where is some chosen algebraic closure of . Putting ’s together we obtain , which takes values in the category of finite free -modules with a -action. Let denote the de Rham realization functor, which takes values in the category of filtered -vector spaces. If , we additionally consider the Betti realization (resp. the Hodge realization ) which takes values in the category of -vector spaces (resp. Hodge structures). For a smooth projective variety over , denotes the object such that is the th -cohomology of , for whenever applicable.
Let be the full Tannakian sub-category generated by the Artin motives and the motives attached to abelian varieties. We will repeatedly make use of the following fact ([LNM900, Ch I], cf. [MPTate, Thm 2.3]):
Theorem (2.1.2).
The functor is fully faithful when restricted to . In particular, for every , every element is given by an absolute Hodge cycle.
We often refer to objects in as abelian motives.
(2.1.3)
We will often consider the automorphism on defined by an element (cf. [LNM900, §II 6.7], see also [MPTate, Prop. 2.2]). For , we write for . Base change properties of étale (resp. de Rham) cohomology give us a -linear (resp. -linear) canonical isomorphism (resp. ). Here the subscript “bc” is short for “base change”. For an absolute Hodge class , we write for the class in which has the same étale and de Rham realizations as under the “” isomorphisms.
Finally, we remark that for , it makes sense to say whether a tensor (see (1.0.5)(d)) is absolute Hodge, because has to lie in of a finite direct sum of tensorial constructions on . And when is absolute Hodge, we may form for , extending the notation in the previous paragraph.
(2.1.4)
Next, we recall the basics of norm functors. The reader may refer to [Moonen, §3] for more details. Let be a field of characteristic and be a finite field extension of . Let be any Tannakian -linear category and be the category of -modules in . For any object , we write for the underlying object in when we forget the -linear structure. In [Ferrand], Ferrand gave a general construction of a norm functor , which was summarized in [Moonen, §3.6]. Note that we restricted to the case when is a field, as opposed to a general étale -algebra in loc. cit. This is good enough for our purposes.
We first consider the case when is the category of -modules . For any , there is a functorial polynomial map such that for any and . The norm functor is a -functor and is non-additive (unless ). However, for any , there is an identification
The above identification gives us a structural map
for any , which sends an -linear automorphism to . Let denote the torus and denote the kernel of the norm map . Viewing as the diagonal torus of , so that is a subgroup of , we have .
Notation (2.1.5).
Take and to be a totally real field. Let be an -vector space equipped with a quadratic form . We often drop from the notation when it is assumed.
-
(a)
Write for the underlying -vector space of , equipped with a quadratic form given by .
-
(b)
Write for , for , and for , or simply and when is understood.
-
(c)
Denote by the even Clifford algebra of over and by its norm .
-
(d)
Let denote the -dimensional quadratic form over given by equiping with the form .
Recall our convention (1.0.5)(c). The association in (a) above defines an equivalence of categories between quadratic forms over and quadratic forms over with an self-adjoint -action ([Knus, Ch 1, Thm 7.4.1]). We call the transfer of , and the -bilinear lift of .
Lemma (2.1.6).
Let be a totally real field, and let be a motive equipped with an -action and a symmetric -bilinear form . If is odd, then is (noncanonically) isomorphic to a submotive of .
The meaning of is explained in the proof.
Proof.
This follows from the content in [Moonen, §5.4]. We give a sketch so that the reader can easily check the details from loc. cit. Set and consider as a representation of its motivic Galois group , which respects and the -action. The motive then corresponds to the -representation .
Let be the set of embeddings , be the symmetric group of , and be the set of -orbits of . Then under the assumption that is odd, there is an ascending filtration on indexed by such that for some , . Therefore, is a subquotient of . As is semisimple, is in fact (non-canonically) a subobject. ∎
2.2 Motives of Varieties with
Definition (2.2.1).
A polarized Hodge structure of weight is said to be of K3-type if , and when . The transcendental part of is the orthogonal complement of .
We recall the following fundamental result of Zarhin:
Theorem (2.2.2) ([Zarhin, §2]).
Let be a Hodge structure of K3-type such that and let be its polarization form. Then the endomorphism algebra is either a totally real field or a CM field, and the adjoint map defined by is the identity map when is totally real and is complex conjugation when is CM.
To discuss motives in families, we first give a definition:
Definition (2.2.3).
Let be a connected smooth -variety. For every -local system over and , we write for the Zariski closure of the image of in , and for its identity component. When is a polarizable VHS444This means that is the -local system and is the filtered flat vector bundle in the VHS. Similar conventions apply throughout the paper. over , we say that has maximal monodromy if is equal to the derived group of the Mumford-Tate group , where is any Hodge-generic point.
For the terminology “Hodge-generic points”, see for example [Moonen-Fom, 31]. Note that [AndreMT, §5] says that in the above notation, is always a normal subgroup of the derived group of (see also [Peters, Thm 16]).
(2.2.4)
For the rest of (2.2), let be a connected smooth -variety and be a -family of relative dimension . Let be the VHS on defined by . Note that by the definition of a -family, satisfies condition (P) in [Moonen, Prop. 6.4]. Let be a relatively ample line bundle on , which defines a symmetric bilinear pairing on such that for local sections . Choose a Hodge-generic base point .
Suppose for a moment that is connected. Then for , admits an orthogonal decomposition , where is a VHS polarized by the pairing induced by and is the unit VHS. Note that the Hodge structure , together with its polarization, is of K3-type and satisfies the hypothesis of (2.2.2). Let be the endomorphism field of . As and commutes with , the -action on commutes with and hence extends to an action on (see e.g., [Peters, Cor. 12]). If (or equivalently ) has maximal monodromy, we say that is in case (R+) if is totally real and (CM) if is CM; we further divide (R+) into case (R1) for odd and case (R2) for even. We say we are in case (R2’) if has non-maximal monodromy, which can only happen when is totally real and . See [Moonen, Prop. 6.4(iii)] and its proof.
If is not connected, we say that is in case for = (R1), (R2), (CM) or (R2’) if it is in case up to replacing by a connected étale cover and by a lift such that becomes connected. The definition is clearly independent of these choices.
Proposition (2.2.5).
Suppose that has non-maximal monodromy, or equivalently belongs to case (R2’). Then for a general and , the Kodaira-Spencer map has rank .
Proof.
We may assume that is conncted, so that there is a decomposition as above. The rank of achieves its maximum on an open dense . Choose some . By [Voisin, Thm 3.5] (cf. [Moonen, Prop. 6.4]), for some point in a small analytic neighborhood of , contains a nonzero class . Let be the irreducible component of the Noether-Lefschetz loci defined by and be its smooth locus. Up to moving along a little bit, we may assume that lies in , is Hodge-generic for the VHS , and . Let be the Hodge structure of K3-type defined by the fiber of at and let be its transcendental part. Then . Set , which contains .
By assumption on a -family, . Suppose by way of contradiction that . Then as has codimension (cf. [Voisin, Lem. 3.1]), does not vanish on . This implies that and by [Moonen, Prop. 6.4] and its proof. Indeed, if is CM, then , so that , which is impossible. Therefore, is totally real and . This forces and . Now let be the -bilinear lift of . Then by [Zarhin, Thm 2.2.1] . As this group is simple, . On the other hand, [Moonen, §8.1] tells us that for some -form of . However, as and are not even isomorphic over , cannot have a subgroup isomorphic to , which constradicts the fact that parallel transport (noncanonically) sends into . ∎
(2.2.6)
The following statements are the key inputs we will use from Moonen’s paper [Moonen]. A little adaptation we make is that we will uniformly use the category of motives with absolute Hodge cycles, whereas Moonen used André’s category with motivated cycles ([AndreMot]). This adaptation makes a difference only for (2.2.7)(d) below. We use to denote André’s category (for base field ) when explaining this difference, but otherwise all motives are considered in . Note that motivated cycles are automatically absolute Hodge, so that is a subcategory of .
Theorem (2.2.7).
Assume that is connected and let and be as in (2.2.4). Let be any point and write for the submotive of such that . Then the action of on is absolute Hodge, i.e., induced by an action of on . Moreover:
-
(a)
In case (R1), is an object of .
-
(b)
In case (R2), for and , is an object of .
-
(c)
In case (R2’), is an object of .
-
(d)
In case (CM), is an object of .
Proof.
The statement that the action of on is absolute Hodge is implied by [Moonen, Prop. 6.6]. Note that our is Moonen’s , and our is Moonen’s . Below we view as an object of . In this proof, (or ) always mean internal (or ) in the category .
(a) We first treat the case (R+). Let be the -bilinear lift of the quadratic form given by with its self-dual -action. By [Moonen, §6.9, 6.10] there is a family of abelian schemes with multiplication by (see (2.1.5)) such that there is an isomorphism
(2) |
of algebra objects in . In case (R1), is odd, and by (2.1.6) is non-canonically a submotive of , and hence is an object of .
(b) In case (R2), (2) still holds, so that is still an object of , but a further trick is needed to recover (a variant of) from . Recall defined in (2.1.5)(d). As in [Moonen, §6.11, 6.12], we consider the VHS , where standards for the unit VHS on . Let and . Then by [Moonen, §6.9, 6.10] again, there is an abelian scheme with multiplication by such that
(3) |
where is the VHS given by the first relative cohomology of . It is shown in loc. cit. that the fiber of the isomorphism (3) at every -point on is induced by an absolute Hodge cycle. Here is a summary of the argument in our notations: Choose a point such that . By the last paragraph of [Moonen, §6.12], there is an isomorphism
of objects in . As is an object of , so is . Therefore, by (2.1.2) the isomorphism (3) is absolute Hodge at , and hence so at every other by Deligne’s Principle B. This implies , so that (b) follows from (2.1.6) again.
(c) This follows directly from [Moonen, Prop. 8.5].
(d) In case (CM), [Moonen, §7.4] tells us that there exists a motive (denoted by therein), an abelian variety over and an abelian scheme , all equipped with multiplication by , such that there is an isomorphism
This implies that . In order to show , it suffices to argue that in .
In loc. cit., is in fact constructed as an object . Moonen remarked that conjecturally there should be an isomorphism in and proved that indeed has trivial Hodge and -adic realizations. We note that his argument in [Moonen, Lem. 7.5] in fact implies that in , i.e., is spanned by absolute Hodge classes: The idea is to take advantage of the fact that is independent of , and that for some , the algebraic part of is nonempty. Since every class in is of type , we have . By Lefschetz -theorem, every class in comes from a line bundle on and hence is absolute Hodge. As classes in are also absolute Hodge, we may now conclude by (2.2.8) below. ∎
Proposition (2.2.8).
Let be a number field and let be objects of with -action. Let . Let be nonzero Hodge cycles and define to be . If and are both absolute Hodge, then so is .
Proof.
Lemma (2.2.9).
Let be a field extension, be any -algebra and be finite dimensional -vector spaces. Let and be a nonzero element of the form under the canonical isomorphism
where and . If and , then .
Proof.
Let and . By choosing bases of and , we may assume and . Identify with the space of -matrices over and with . We denote by the respective -coordinates of and and fix such that . Then for every , and hence because by assumption. ∎
3 Moduli Interpretations of Shimura Varieties
In this section, we first recall the moduli description for the canonical models of some Shimura varieties of abelian type from [YangSystem]. Then we give some prelimary results on those of orthogonal type over totally real fields and review their integral models when the reflex field is .
3.1 Systems of realizations
Definition (3.1.1).
Let be a subfield of and be a smooth -variety. By a system of realizations we mean a tuple where
-
•
is a -local system over ;
-
•
is a filtered flat vector bundle over ;
-
•
is an étale local system of -coefficients over ;
-
•
is an isomorphism of flat (holomorphic) vector bundles such that is a polarizable VHS;
-
•
is an isomorphism between (the pro-étale sheaf associated to) and .
We may often omit in the notation and write and a little abusively. Let denote the category of systems of realizations over , with morphisms defined in the obvious way. Then is a naturally a Tannakian category. Let be its unit object and for each let be the Tate object. For every , set . Note that if , then is naturally identified with the category of polarizable VHS over . We write for .
Our definition is a little different from [FuMoonen, §6.1] because we fixed an embedding , but see [YangSystem, (3.1.3)] for a comparison. Also, recall our convention in (1.0.5)(e) for VHS. We remind the reader that since is defined over , when we write , we mean a -linear morphism , which we view simultaneously as a closed point on .
Next, we recall how to define a -level structure in this context. Interestingly this definition can be leveraged to define additional structures on , as (3.1.3) below shows.
Definition (3.1.2).
Let be a reductive group over , let be a finite dimensional -representation and be a compact open subgroup. For any subfield , smooth -variety and any system of realizations on we make the following definitions.
-
(a)
A -level structure on , or simply a -level structure, is a global section of . Here denotes the pro-étale sheaf consisting of isomorphisms , and acts by pre-composition through its image in . For each geometric point , write the -orbit of isomorphisms determined by as .
-
(b)
If is a -level structure on , every element gives rise to a global section of , which we denote by , such that for every geometric point , every representative of sends to . We say that is -rational if (i) for all , there exists a global section such that , and (ii) for every , .
-
(c)
Let be a -conjugacy class of morphisms . When is faithful, we say that a -rational -level structure is of type if for every , under some (and hence every) isomorphism the Hodge structure on is defined by an element of .
-
(d)
If there is a morphism from another reductive subgroup , and is a compact open subgroup whose image is contained in , then we say that a -level structure on refines if is induced by via the natural (forgetful) map .
The definitions (b) and (c) above are used to simplify the formalism of the moduli interpretation of Shimura varieties. To explain this, we give a PEL-type example:
Example (3.1.3).
Let be a simple PEL-datum (i.e., is a simple -algebra with positive involution of type or and is a symplectic -module). We denote by the -group of -linear similitudes and fix an open compact subgroup . Then there exists a unique -conjugacy class such that is a Shimura datum and is in canonical bijection with the set of isomorphism classes of tuples where
-
•
is a -Hodge structure of type ,
-
•
is an algebra morphism,
-
•
is a -equivalence class of -linear symplectic pairing of and
-
•
is a -orbit of a -linear similitude
such that there exists a -linear similitude through which the Hodge structure on is defined by an element of (see e.g. [MilIntro, Prop. 8.14, Thm. 8.17]). Here we implicitly applied the equivalence between the category of complex abelian varieties up to isogeny and that of polarizable Hodge structures of type .
Note that an object of is nothing but a polarizable Hodge structure. We can more concisely define as the isomorphism classes of pairs where
-
•
and
-
•
is a -rational -level structure on of type .
Indeed, if we view each as a tensor in and as a tensor in (cf. [Kim:RZ, Ex. 2.1.6]), we have and in the notation of (3.1.2)(b). In particular, the datum of and is remembered by the condition that and come from global sections (i.e., elements) of of Hodge type . Since is the stabilizer of and in , we may equivalently say that this is true for all . Therefore, the existence of and such that there exists a -linear similitude is equivalent to being -rational. Then the condition can be simply stated as “ is of type ” in the sense of (3.1.2)(c).
Now we introduce some notation to keep track of Galois descent data in a system of realizations:
Notation (3.1.4).
Let be a smooth variety over a subfield of . Let and be any elements. Denote by the point given by pre-composing the -linear morphism with . Given , we write the natural isomorphism induced by , viewed as a descent of from to ; similarly, we write for the natural -linear isomorphism induced by the descent of (the algebraization of) .
To clarify the meaning of , we remark that and are usually different closed points on , and they are equal if and only if fixes the residue field , where is the image of . The collection of as runs through is nothing but the Galois action on the stalk .
Definition (3.1.5).
We say that a system of realizations is weakly abelian-motivic (weakly AM) if for every , there exists such that ; moreover, for any such isomorphism and , there exists an isomorphism such that the Betti components of fit into commutative diagrams:
and | (4) |
We note that is uniquely determined by provided that it exists. Denote the full subcategory of given by these objects by . It is easy to check that if is a morphism between smooth -varieties, the natural pullback functor sends to .
Lemma (3.1.6).
([YangSystem, (3.4.1)]) Let be a smooth variety over and take . Let be a morphism . Then descends to a morphism if and only if either the étale or the de Rham component of descends to .
When applied to the case , the above lemma says that for , if the étale realization of a global section of which is everywhere of Hodge type descends to , then so does the de Rham realization, and vice versa. This is a global version of the following statement: Suppose that and is absolute Hodge. Then descends to (i.e., is -invariant) if and only if descends to . Note that if , then any Hodge cycle is automatically absolute Hodge.
For future reference we give a handy lemma on (b) and (c) in (3.1.2).
Lemma (3.1.7).
Suppose that in (3.1.2)(a), the representation is faithful, is geometrically connected as a -variety, and for some there is an isomorphism such that ; moreover, for some as in (3.1.2)(c), the Hodge structure on is defined by an element of via .
Then, assuming either or , is -rational and of type .
Proof.
Note that by assumption is connected, and the fact that represents a -level structure at implies that its -orbit is -stable. In particular, for each , fixes , so there exists a such that . Likewise, there exists such that , and is precisely the in (3.1.2)(b).
Note that is necessarily of Hodge type at , because the Mumford-Tate group of the Hodge structure is contained in via . This implies that is of Hodge type everywhere by the theorem of the fixed part. Let be the global section in induced by . Then algebraizes to a global section of (cf. [DelVB, II Thm 5.9]).
If (so that ), then we have already shown that is -rational; moreover, one deduces from the connectedness of and [DelVdShimura, (1.1.12)] that remains of type on . If is a general subfield, it remains to show that descends to under the additional assumption that . However, as the étale realization of descends to a global section of (i.e., ), this follows from (3.1.6). ∎
3.2 Shimura varieties
Let be a Shimura datum which satisfies the axioms in [Milne:CanonicalModels, II (2.1)]. Let be the reflex field, be the center of and be the maximal anisotropic subtorus of that is split over . In this paper, we always assume that
(5) |
Note that in particular the latter condition ensures that is discrete in ([MilIntro, Rmk 5.27]). We will often drop the Hermitian symmetric domain from the notation of Shimura varieties when no confusion would arise.
For any compact open subgroup , let denote the resulting Shimura variety with a complex uniformization and let denote the canonical model over . Let denote the inverse limit as runs through all compact open subgroups. Under our assumptions, is described by ([MilIntro, (5.28)]). Note that .
(3.2.1)
Let be a representation. For any neat compact open subgroup , we can attach to an automorphic VHS (cf. [Milne:CanonicalModels, Ch. II 3.3], [Taelman2, §2.2]). In particular, is defined to be the contraction product
(6) |
The filtration on is obtained by descending the filtration on the tautological VHS on . Analogously, the automorphic étale local system on the proétale site of is defined as the contraction product
(7) |
which comes with a comparison isomorphism . Moreover, by construction over comes with a tautological -level structure , i.e., a global section of .
Define to be the restriction of to . Using , we can already give a moduli interpretation of . Below is a reformulation of [Mil94, Prop. 3.10] in our terminology (cf. [YangSystem, (4.1.2)])555Technically, the example discussed in (3.1.3) may not satisfy (5), but it helps illustrate how to compare our formulation and Milne’s..
Theorem (3.2.2).
Assume that is faithful. For every smooth -variety , let be the groupoid of tuples of the form where is a VHS over and is a -level structure on which is -rational and is of type .
Then is an object of and for every object there exists a unique morphism such that .
We remark that as is neat, assumption (5) ensures that the objects in above have no nontrivial automorphisms (cf. [Mil94, Rmk 3.11]).
To describe the moduli problem for the canonical model, we restrict to the following subclass of Shimura data, which contains all cases we will consider in the following chapters.
Assumption (3.2.3).
There exists a morphism of Shimura data such that
-
(i)
is of Hodge type and also satisfies assumption (5);
-
(ii)
is surjective and the kernel lies in the center of ;
-
(iii)
the embedding of reflex fields is an equality.
Below we assume that is a Shimura datum which satisfies the above assumptions.
(3.2.4)
For any representation , and set up in (3.2.1), there exists a unique descent of to such that is a weakly AM system of realizations (see ([YangSystem, (4.2.2)])). We call the automorphic system (of realizations) on attached to . The tautological -level structure on is -rational, and is of type when is faithful.
Theorem (3.2.5).
([YangSystem, (4.3.1)]) Assume that is faithful. Let be a subfield which contains and be a smooth -variety. Let be the groupoid of pairs where , and is a -level structure on such that is -rational and is of type .
Then is an object of , and for each , there exists a unique such that .
Note that any object in above has no nontrivial automorphisms because this is already true when . This is a key fact that we shall use repeatedly throughout the paper. The above is proved by first constructing a morphism such that and then showing that the action of on the -points are -equivariant. This is clearly inspired by the proof of [MPTate, Cor. 5.4]. However, unlike [MPTate, Prop. 5.6(1)], we show that descends over using a rigidity lemma about weakly-AM systems of realizations (see [YangSystem, (3.4.4), (3.4.5) and (4.3.2)]).
3.3 Orthogonal Shimura Varieties over Totally Real Fields
(3.3.1)
Let be a totally real number field and let be a quadratic form over which has signature at a unique real place and is negative definitive at every other real place. We set and
Let be the transfer (recall (2.1.5)). Set and define as above (applied to the case). Note that is the identity component of the centeralizer of the -action in . We view as a -conjugacy class of morphisms such that an element corresponds to the morphism which gives a Hodge structure of K3-type with (cf. [CSpin, §3.1]). Likewise we view as a -conjugacy class of morphisms , which are those whose composition with defines a Hodge structure on which is preserved by the -action on . It is well-known that is a Shimura datum with reflex field , viewed as a subfield of under .
Let denote . Then is a Shimura datum of Hodge type with reflex field which admits a natural morphism to .
Lemma (3.3.2).
satisfies Assumption (3.2.3).
Proof.
Consider . It is well known that is a Shimura datum with reflex field . Unfortunately, it does not satisfy condition (5) unless as the center of has identity component . Thus we modify this approach by dividing out the maximal anisotropic torus of ; explicitly we consider ( the norm map)
Note that , so we obtain a morphism of Shimura data. It remains to check (i) and (iii) in (3.2.3). First, note that can be canonically identified with the fiber product (see [Moonen, §4.2, 4.3]), so that there is a diagram with exact rows
Now is clear. As is of Hodge type and embeds into , is also of Hodge type. As the reflex fields of and are both well known to be , the same must be true for . ∎
(3.3.3)
We do some preparations to future reference. Below for any -linear Tannakian category , we write for either one of the following two functors: or (see notations in (2.1.4)). Any conclusion applies to both functors.
Recall the notations from (2.1.5), and write and simply as and . Then is a faithful representation of , as the composite has kernel exactly . Let and be compact open subgroups such that contains the image of . For each prime , let be the image of under the projection .
Let be the -conjugacy class of morphisms which contains the image of . Then is a Shimura datum which admits a natural morphism . Since lies in the center of and is discrete, by [DeligneTdShimura, Prop. 3.8] has the same reflex field as . Moreover, one easily checks that satisfies (3.2.3) using that does.
Remark (3.3.4).
Note that if is odd, then is trivial; in this case, the reader should read the content below with in mind. The case when is even will only be used for §4.3.
(3.3.5)
Let be a subfield and be a smooth -variety. Note that the identification gives an -action, which commutes with . Suppose that is a system equipped with a -level structure . Then transports the -action on to one on , through which we may view as a global section of . Moreover, there is a natural map
through which defines a -level structure on , which we denote by .
Lemma (3.3.6).
Let , and be as above. Let be another system with -level structure . Suppose that there is an isomorphism such that descends to an isomorphism over .
If is a prime such that , then the -adic component of descends to an isomorphism over .
Proof.
We may assume that is connected. Choose a base point . Set and let be any element. Our goal is to show that . Note that as descends to , we already know that . Let be a representative of . Then , because the -orbit is -stable. Set . Then represents , so that . Now we have
Note that . However, as the kernel of the -action on lies in , we must have , i.e., . ∎
(3.3.7)
We will often consider the following diagram of Shimura data:
Let and be neat compact open subgroups such that and contains the image of . Then we have Shimura morphisms and defined over . Let (resp. ) be the automorphic system on (resp. ) attached to the standard representation of (resp. ) and (resp. ) be the tautological -level structure (resp. -level structure), as defined in (3.2.4). Then there is a natural identification and refines in the sense of (3.1.2)(d).
Note that endows with a canonical -action. A priori it only defines an -action on , but since is -rational, its restriction to comes from an -action on . Then by (3.1.6), one deduces that the resulting -action on via the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence descends to . Therefore, it makes sense to form . Since is weakly AM in the sense of (3.1.5), so is . This is simply because we may apply the functor to and it commutes with the cohomological realizations.
Now let be the automorphic system on attached to and let be its tautological -level structure. We claim that there is an (necessarily unique) isomorphism
(8) |
Indeed, to verify this isomorphism one first checks its implications on the automorphic VHS and étale local systems, which follow from the explicit descriptions in (3.2.1), then applies (3.1.6).
3.4 Integral Model
Let be a quadratic form over and suppose that there is a self-dual -lattice for a prime . Then extends to the reductive -group , which we still write as by abuse of notation. Let be a neat compact open subgroup of the form with and . Then by [KisinInt] and [CSpin], admits a canonical integral model over .
The Shimura variety is typically studied via the corresponding spinor Shimura variety, which is of Hodge type. Let . Set to be , to be a small enough compact open subgroup whose image in is contained in , and to be the product . The reflex field of is and by [KisinInt] there is an canonical integral model over . There is a suitable sympletic space and a Siegel half space such that there is an embedding of Shimura data which eventually equips with a universal abelian scheme .666Technically, in [KisinInt] and [CSpin], is only defined as a sheaf of abelian schemes up to prime-to- quasi-isogeny. However, for sufficiently small, we can take to be an actual abelian scheme (cf. [KisinInt, (2.1.5)]). Let be the structural morphism. Define the sheaves , (), , and (). The abelian scheme is equipped with a “CSpin-structure”: a -grading, -action and an idempotent projector for on (various applicable fibers of) . We use to denote the images of , and recall the definition of special endomorphisms ([CSpin, Def. 5.2, see also Lem. 5.4, Cor. 5.22]):
Definition (3.4.1).
For any -scheme , is called a special endomorphism if for some (and hence all) , the -adic realization of lies in ; if for a perfect field in characteristic , then equivalently is called a special endomorphism if the crystalline realization of lies in . We write the submodule of consisting of special endomorphisms as .
(3.4.2)
It is explained in [CSpin, §5.24] that the sheaves on (applicable fibers of) in fact descend to the corresponding fibers of . We denote the descent of these sheaves by the same letters. It is not hard to see that together with the restrictions of and to is nothing but the automorphic system attached to , in our terminology (3.2.4). Similarly, together with the restrictions of and to (or ) is precisely the automorphic system attached to (or ). Readers who wish to check this can look at how the automorphic systems are constructed in [YangSystem, §4.2], which is essentially a generalization of [CSpin, §5.24]. The construction of the -sheaves are also summarized in more detail in [Yang, (3.1.3)]. In particular, there are natural identifications of with , and (resp. ) with the restriction of (resp. ) to , where was the notation we used in (3.3.7).
(3.4.3)
Let be the limit as runs through the compact open subgroups of and define similarly. The canonical extension property of is that for any regular, formally smooth -scheme , every morphism extends to . We give an extension property for finite level, which is certainly well known to experts:
Theorem (3.4.4).
Let be a smooth -scheme which admits a morphism . If extends to a local system over for every prime , then extends to a morphism , through which is identified with the pullback of .
Proof.
To simplify notation, let and . Note that . Now the prime-to- part of the tautological level structure gives us a section , where the target is viewed as a pro-étale cover of . By [stacks-project, 0BQM], extends to a morphism , where the target is a pro-étale cover of . We define as the pull-back
Note that since is a -torsor for the proétale topology, is representable by a scheme. As can be defined by an analogous construction, lifts to a -equivariant morphism . The canonical extension property allows us to extend it to a (necessarily -equivariant) morphism . Now the -action defines an étale descend datum which yields the desired morphism . ∎
4 Period Morphisms
4.1 The Basic Set-up
We first state a few basic definitions and results which will be needed to construct the period morphism.
Definition (4.1.1).
Let be a connected noetherian normal scheme with geometric point , be a prime with and be an étale -local system over . We denote by the Zariski closure of the image of in , and denote by the identity component of .
If is another -local system, then we say that and are étale locally isomorphic if they are isomorphic over some finite connected étale cover of ; or equivalently, there is an isomorphism which is equivariant under an open subgroup of .
Lemma (4.1.2).
Let be a noetherian integral normal scheme with generic point . Let be a smooth proper morphism.
-
(a)
The natural map is surjective with kernel .
-
(b)
If for some geometric point over and prime , is connected, then the natural map is an isomorphism.
Proof.
(a) We may always extend a line bundle on to for some open dense subscheme , and then to a line bundle on (use e.g., [Hartshorne, Prop. II.6.5]). But any two extensions to differ by an element of by [EGAIV4, ErrIV Cor. 21.4.13].
(b) Let be the geometric point over obtained by taking the separable closure of in . Then every class of descends to . As the natural morphism is surjective, and acts on through a finite quotient, the connectedness assumption on implies that in fact acts trivially. This implies that every class in descends to . ∎
Now we state the set-up we will work with for the entire section.
Set-up (4.1.3).
Let be a subfield finitely generated over and let be a connected smooth -variety with generic point . Let be a -family with a relatively ample line bundle . We fix a subspace containing the class of . Now choose an -linear embedding and let be the resulting point, which we also view as a closed point on . Let denote the connected component containing . We assume that for some (and hence every, see (4.1.4) below) prime , is connected.
Define a pairing on by for local sections and . By (4.1.2), every line bundle on extends to a relative line bundle on . By taking Chern classes, we obtain a well defined embedding , where is the constant sheaf with fiber . Define to be the orthogonal complement of in . We define the primitive Betti cohomology over and étale cohomology over analogously. Then is a system of realizations over in the sense of (3.1.1). Note that we applied a Tate twist so that the VHS has weight . Since we assumed is connected for some , by (4.1.2). This implies that orthogonally decomposes into where is the orthogonal complement of in and is another object in . Moreover, there are no nonzero -classes in . Note that is nothing but when .
Lemma (4.1.4).
In the above set-up, is connected for every prime , and is a Hodge-generic point for the VHS .
Proof.
The first statement follows from the assumption that is finitely generated over and [Larsen-Pink, Prop. 6.14], which implies that the étale group scheme of connected components of is independent of . The second statement follows from the main theorem of [Moonen].777The main theorem of [Moonen] is an overkill for the purpose here and only used to avoid a case by case discussion of Mumford-Tate groups. Since the statement only concerns , we may replace by and by its field of definition and thus assume that is geometrically connected. Then we may make use of the notion of Galois-generic points ([Moonen-Fom, Def. 4.2.1]). As the Momford-Tate conjecture is known for of the fibers of and lies above , the fact that is Galois-generic implies that is Hodge-generic. ∎
(4.1.5)
Let be a quadratic form over which is isomorphic to and fix an isometry . Let . Let . Note that via , the monodromy representation of takes values in . We say that is admissible if the image of in lies in via , or equivalently, extends to a -level structure on with . Define as in (3.3.3). Then is a Shimura datum of abelian type with reflex field . Again let be the automorphic system on attached to , and let be the tautological -level structure on (see (3.2.4)).
(4.1.6)
Suppose that belongs to case (R+) or (R2’) described in (2.2.4), i.e., the endomorphism field of the Hodge structure on is totally real. By (2.2.2), the -action on is self-adjoint. Let act on through . Recall the notations in (2.1.5). Let be the -bilinear lift of , i.e., and set , . In addition, set and . Embed into by acting trivially on . This induces an embedding .
We say that a neat compact open subgroup satisfies condition depending on the particular case ( below):
-
(R1)
Always.
-
(R2)
If the image of in lies in some neat compact open subgroup.
-
(R2’)
If the image of in lies in some neat compact open subgroup.
In case (R2’), we say that for a prime , is sufficiently small if . Here is the image of under the projection and is defined similarly.
(4.1.7)
(4.1.8)
For the rest of section 4, we will put a standing assumption that is geometically connected as an -variety, so that .
Let be a neat compact open subgroup and assume that it is also admissible, so that extends to a -level structure on with . Now (3.1.7) guarantees that the restriction of to is -rational and is of type . Therefore, (3.2.2) gives us a unique morphism such that
(9) |
Note that as is neat, the above isomorphism is unique; we denote its étale component by and let be its -adic component for a prime .
Theorem (4.1.9).
In the notations above, assume either
-
(a)
for every (e.g., when the family belongs to case (CM)), or
-
(b)
the family belongs to case (R+) = (R1) + (R2) and satisfies condition as defined in (4.1.6).
Then descends to a morphism over . Moreover, descends to an isomorphism over .
Case (a) is easy: The diagrams in (4.1.7) readily imply that over is weakly AM, so that the conclusion follows from (3.2.5). In fact, we have that the de Rham component of the isomorphism (9) also descends to . Note that case (a) in particular covers the case when belongs to case (CM) by (2.2.7)(d). The proof of case (b) is the content of §4.2 below. If belongs to case (R2’) and it is not known that for every , a slightly weaker version of the above theorem holds:
Theorem (4.1.10).
Assume that the family belongs to case (R2’), , satisfies condition , and for a prime , is sufficiently small as defined in (4.1.6).
Then descends to a morphism for a finite extension in . Moreover, descends to an isomorphism , and is étale locally isomorphic to for every other in the sense of (4.1.1).
Remark (4.1.11).
In literature, to define period morphisms to orthogonal Shimura varieties, one usually keeps track of a trivialization of the determinants (cf. [MPTate, Prop. 4.3]). Such a trivialization (i.e., an isometry in our notations) is implicit in the statement that (the restriction to of) is -rational as a -level structure, because is -invariant. More concretely, one obtains this trivialization by globalizing , using that fixes (cf. the proof of (3.1.7)). However, we remark that if were not geometrically connected, we would not be able to show that is -rational over the connected components of other than , unless we know is spanned by an absolute Hodge class (e.g., in case (a) of (4.1.9)).
On the other hand, for the purpose of putting level structures, the lack of absolute-Hodgeness of is partially remedied by independence-of- type results on algebraic monodromy (e.g., [Saitodisc, Lem. 3.2], cf. [Taelman2, Cor. 5.9]) which implies that if for some , is -invariant, then the same is true for all . In (4.1.4) we used Larsen-Pink’ result [Larsen-Pink, Prop. 6.14] to achieve a similar effect. Later in (4.2.4) this is used to overcome a similar difficulty: We do not know that the tensors which cut out from are given by absolute-Hodge tensors on via . As far as we are aware of, this cannot be deduced from (2.2.7). However, we can put -level structures on in question and proceed.
4.2 Case (R+): Maximal Monodromy
Lemma (4.2.1).
It suffices to prove (4.1.9) when .
Proof.
Let be the orthogonal complement of in and set . Then and we view as the stabilizer of in . The image of in via actually lies in . Therefore, satisfies condition for .
Let be the automorphic system on given by , be the -level structure on , and be the -level structure on defined by . As in the paragraph above (4.1.9), we obtain a morphism such that . Define accordingly.
Consider the Shimura morphism . Then we have natural identifications
(10) |
Moreover, the level structure (resp. ) refines (resp. ) in the sense of (3.1.2)(d). Therefore, one easily checks that
By the uniqueness statement in (3.2.2), this implies that .
Assume now that descends to over , and descends to over . Then descends to , and descends to an isomorphism over . ∎
(4.2.2)
In this section we prove (4.1.9). By (4.2.1), we may assume that , so that and . Let be as introduced in (4.1.6). In particular, is the endomorphism field of the Hodge structure , and is the -bilinear lift of , which carries an -action via the isometry fixed in (4.1.5).
Note that by (2.2.7) each , viewed as an element of , is absolute Hodge, so its image in is stabilized by an open subgroup of . Since we assumed that is connected for every , the -action on must already be -equivariant. This has the following consequence:
Lemma (4.2.3).
The action of on extends to an action on . If is the embedding induced by the action of on , or equivalently the unique indefinite real place of , then .
Proof.
For the first statement, it is clear that the -action on (resp. ) extends (necessarily uniquely) to and (resp. ) because it is (resp. )-equivariant. It remains to show that the -action on , obtained via the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence, descends to an action on . This follows from the fact that the de Rham realization of every , as an element of , descends to : Since is absolute Hodge and its étale component is -invariant, its de Rham component descends to (cf. the argument for [KisinInt, (2.2.2)]).
We remind the reader that by we mean the set of -linear morphisms . The first statement implies that for every , carries an action of , which is self-adjoint by (2.2.2); moreover, for every , the -linear isomorphism of filtered vector spaces is -equivariant (see (3.1.4) for this notation). Therefore, if we let be the place through which acts on , then . Now we use that can also be characterized as the unique real place of such that is indefinite. Parallel transport implies that is constant on , which by assumption is connected. As and , for every . This implies that . ∎
(4.2.4)
Below we shall view as a subfield of (and hence of ) via as above and drop from the notation. Now we recall the discussion in (3.3.7): Let be the Hermitian symmetric subdomain . Then is a Shimura subdatum of with reflex field . Therefore, there is a Shimura morphism which descends to over . Let be the automorphic system on defined by and let be its tautological -structure. Recall that is identified with , and refines .
Consider the situation in (4.1.8). Recall that we assumed that is connected for every . Since the centralizer of the -action in can be identified with , which contains as the identity component, the monodromy action of must take values in via . Therefore, there exists a -level structure on such that . As the Hodge structure on is defined by a point on via , by (3.1.7) the restriction of to is -rational and of type . One easily checks that:
Lemma (4.2.5).
Hence we reduce (4.1.9) to:
Theorem (4.2.6).
(4.2.7)
We first treat the case when is odd. In this case, is faithful. Let be the automorphic system on associated to . Let be the tautological -level structure on . Then by (3.3.7), there is a unique isomorphism
(12) |
Lemma (4.2.8).
is weakly AM in the sense of (3.1.5).
Proof.
Lemma (4.2.9).
There exists a unique morphism such that
(13) |
Moreover, .
Proof.
(4.2.10)
Recall that in (4.1.6) for defined in (2.1.5). If is even, we let play the role of in the above proof. Recall that in (4.1.9) we assumed that satisfies condition and we are currently in situation , so that for some neat compact open . Define the Hermitian symmetric domain with replaced by in . Then we obtain an embedding of Shimura data . By [DeligneTdShimura, (1.15)], for some , the Shimura morphism is an embedding. Replacing by if necessary, we may assume that the Shimura morphism is also an embedding. Below we write this embedding simply as . Let be the automorphic system of realizations on given by and let be the tautological -level structure on .
The reader should now apply the discussion in (3.3.7) with replaced by , replaced by , and (cf. (3.3.4)). In particular, is equipped with a natural -action. This time we set . Let be the automorphic system on given by and let be the tautological -level structure. Note that is faithful as is odd. Now (3.3.7) tells us that
(15) |
It is not hard to see that the restriction of to is naturally identified with . Correspondingly, we set and define by . Then defines a -level structure with . Define . Then we have:
(16) |
Lemma (4.2.11).
There exists a unique morphism such that
(17) |
Moreover, .
Proof.
By (2.2.7)(b) and a slight variant of the argument for (4.2.8), is weakly AM. As , (3.1.7) says that the -level structure is -rational. As is of type , is of type , so that is also of type . Applying (3.2.5) to the faithful representation of , we obtain the desired map such that (17) holds. By the uniqueness statement in (3.2.2), to show it suffices to observe that
One checks this by applying to (16). ∎
Proof of (4.2.6) for even: The above implies that descends to over . Recall that and is an embedding. As the actions on -points of both and are -equivariant, the same is true for , so that descends to a morphism over with .
Let be the étale component of (16). Then is the étale component of (17) restricted to . Therefore, descends to . Applying (3.3.6) to , we have that descends to an isomorphism over . Note the decompositions and . Since respects these decompositions over by construction, its descent over must also respect these decompositions, which are defined over . Hence restricts to the sought after in (4.2.6). ∎
4.3 Case (R2’): non-maximal monodromy
By (2.2.5), we expect this case to be rare in practice. Readers who are not particularly interested in this case might skip to the next section.
Lemma (4.3.1).
Let be a subfield and be -varieties with being geometrically connected. Suppose that there is a morphism over , and an étale morphism over such that for some , . Then descends to a subfield of which is finite over such that .
Proof.
We assume without loss of generality that is algebraically closed. The graph of (as a morphism between -schemes) defines a section of the étale morphism . Hence maps isomorphically onto a connected component of . Since is algebraically closed, comes from an extension of scalars of a connected component . As the natural projection is defined over and its base change to is the inverse of , we must have that is also defined over , and hence so is . ∎
Below for any -linear Tannakian category , we write for the functor (cf. (2.1.4)).
Proof of (4.1.10). As before, set and let be the Shimura morphism. Our discussions in (4.2.2) up to (4.2.5) apply without any change in the (R2’) case, so that factors through a morphism such that
(18) |
and we still have . We first show that descends to a morphism for some finite extension in .
Set . Then is a faithful representation of (2.1.5). Since in (4.1.10) we assumed that satisfies condition , there exists a neat such that the image of lies in . Now recall our discussion in (3.3.7) and the notations therein. Let be the natural Shimura morphism over . Let denote the -level structure on such that . By applying to the diagrams in (4.1.7), (2.2.7)(c) implies that is weakly AM. One checks using (3.1.7) that is -rational, and is of type . Then by (3.2.5), we obtain a morphism such that
(19) |
By applying to (18) and comparing with (8) in (3.3.7), for we obtain
Therefore, by the uniqueness statement in (3.2.2), , i.e., is defined over . As is étale and is defined over . By (4.3.1), descends to a morphism over some finite extension in such that .
The above gives the first statement of (4.1.10) and we now turn to the second. Recall that we defined in (4.1.8). Since and , we may alternatively view as the étale component of (18), i.e., an isomorphism , which sends to . As , (19) gives us an isomorphism
whose restriction to is . This implies that descends to . As we assumed that , (3.3.6) tells us that the -adic component descends to . For every other , still contains an open subgroup such that . Hence (3.3.6) implies that is étale-locally isomorphic to . ∎
5 Proof of Theorem B
5.1 A specialization lemma for monodromy
Definition (5.1.1).
Let be a noetherian integral normal scheme. Let be a prime and be an étale -local system. We denote by the dimension where is a geometric point on and runs through open subgroups of .
It is clear that the definition is independent of the choice of .
Definition (5.1.2).
Let be a noetherian base scheme and be a smooth -scheme of finite type.
-
(a)
Let be a prime and be an étale -local system. We say that has constant if there exists a number such that for every geometric point and every connected component of , . When this condition is satisfied, write for .
-
(b)
We say that is a good relative compactification of if is a smooth proper -scheme and there exists a relative normal crossing divisor of such that .
Lemma (5.1.3).
Let be a DVR with special point and generic point . Assume and . Let be a smooth morphism of finite type with being connected. Let be a -local system over . If admits a good relative compactification over , then has constant over .
Proof.
Let be the strict Henselianization of and let and be the special and generic point of . Let be a connected component of . Then [stacks-project, 055J] tells us that is connected. As necessarily contains a -rational point, is geometrically connected. Now by applying [stacks-project, 0E0N] to , and have the same number of geometric connected components, so must be connected. To prove the lemma we may replace by and by , so that and are both geometrically connected. Let be the geometric point over defined by a chosen algebraic closure of .
Choose a section and set . Note that provides an étale path between and , through which we identify with and with . Let be the monodromy representation. For any group with a morphism implicitly understood, write for the identity component of the Zariski closure of the image of in . Clearly, remains unchanged if we replace by a finite index subgroup. It suffices to show that , i.e., in the notation in (4.1.1).
Take a sequence of locally constant free -modules over such that . As , each is tamely ramified over by Abhyankar’s lemma [SGA1, XIII App. Prop. 5.5]888There is a typo in the statement: should be , not .. Let us use a superscript “” to indicate tame fundamental group. Then we know that for . By [SGA1, XIII Ex. 2.10], the natural map is an isomorphism, so it remains to show that .
The section induces an isomorphism . As is necessarily trivial, the subgroup acts trivially on . Therefore, as desired. Note that the second equality follows from the simple fact that maps surjectively to , and is a quotient of . ∎
Proposition (5.1.4).
Let be a connected smooth -variety and be a -family. Let be any Hodge-generic point on . Then for any prime and , .
Proof.
Up to replacing by a connected étale cover, assume that is connected (see (4.1.1)). Set . By (4.1.2), . As is unchanged if we replace by a further connected étale cover, . Let be the VHS . Then splits into for some VHS such that . It suffices to argue that , where .
Set (see (2.2.3)). Then we have . This implies that , so we reduce to showing that . We recall that Deligne’s theorem of the fixed part [DelHdg, (4.1.2)] says that the subspace has a Hodge structure which is respected by the embedding . Since the Hodge structure on is irreducible ([HuyK3Book, §3 Lem. 2.7]), is either or . But it cannot be because by our assumption that is a -family. ∎
5.2 An Effective Theorem
Set-up (5.2.1).
Let be a connected separated scheme over which is smooth and of finite type for some prime . Let be a smooth projective morphism of relative dimension such that is a -family. Let be the generic point of . Let be a relatively ample line bundle on , which endows and a symmetric bilinear pairing. Let be a subspace which contains the class of . Recall that by (4.1.2), . By choosing a section , we obtain an embedding , and for every field and , (and hence ) is naturally a subspace of . We write for the orthogonal complement of in . Note that these definitions are independent of the section chosen. Choose a base point lying above and let the connected component of which contains be .
We assume that is connected. Now apply the set-ups in (4.1.3) and (4.1.5) with and and define a system of realizations ; moreover, we fix an isometry and define the Shimura datum . Let be the image of in and define similarly ( is short for “torsion-free”). Let and . For every , let be the orthogonal complement of in , so that over extends to over . If is a perfect field of characteristic and , for every point , defines a pairing on the F-isocrystal and we write for the orthogonal complement of the classes in . Assume that the -pairing on is self-dual. We abusively write the reductive -group also as .
Under the above set-up, we define:
Definition (5.2.2).
Let be a neat compact open subgroup of the form for and . Let denote the integral model of over . Let be a prime. We say that a morphism is an -admissible period morphism if (recall the notations in (3.4.2))
-
(a)
there exists an isometry compatible with the Hodge filtrations (i.e., induces an isomorphism of VHS over );
-
(b)
there is an isometry whose restriction to agrees with ;
-
(c)
for every , is étale-locally isomorphic to over ;
-
(d)
is étale locally isomorphic to over .
Note that the isomorphism is unique if it exists. If (b) is satisfied for every prime , then we simply say that is admissible.
Theorem (5.2.3).
Proof.
Define and as in §3.4. Choose a compact open subgroup whose image is contained in such that is neat. Up to replacing by a further connected étale cover, let us assume that can be lifted to a morphism . Below we shall use to denote this lift. Recall the definition of special endomorphisms in (3.4.1). Under these preparations, we have the following proposition:
Proposition (5.2.4).
For every algebraically closed field and geometric point , there is an isomorphism such that the diagram
(20) |
commutes, where the vertical arrows are cycle class maps.
Now we prove (5.2.3) assuming the proposition above. First, we introduce a -adic analogue of over a closed point: Let and let be its fraction field. Let denote the Frobenius action on . Let be an -isocrystal over , i.e., a finite dimensional -vector space equipped with an isomorphism . The -vector space is defined to be . For every , one naturally defines an F-isocrystal structure on . Now we set
Choose a geometric point over . Below any -scheme is automatically viewed also as an -scheme via .
Let us first assume that the field in (5.2.3) is finite. Then we have
where is the natural Frobenius action on crystalline cohomology. Indeed, both sides are equal to the order of the pole of the zeta function of at ([Morrow, Prop. 4.1]). This implies that for every prime . By assumption (5.2.2)(c), we also have . Similarly, we argue that
(21) |
Indeed, suppose that . Lift to some . Take to be the generic point of , and let be a geometric point over . Using the -adic comparison isomorphism and the compatibility with cycle class maps (cf. [BMS, Thm 14.3] and [IIK, Cor. 11.6]), as well as [CSpin, Prop. 4.7], we see that
Now (21) follows because by assumption (5.2.2)(d) there exists an isomorphism which is equivariant under an open subgroup of , so that the F-isocrystals above are isomorphic up to base changing to for some .
Now for any (not necessarily finite) and in (5.2.3), we claim that
(22) |
The above paragraph implies that if is finite, then every prime , ; that is, assumption [MPTate, (6.2)] is satisfied for , so that (22) is given by [MPTate, Thm 6.4]. When is not finite, the claim follows from the proof of [MPTate, Cor. 6.11]. Indeed, we may assume that is the fraction field of some smooth and geometrically connected variety over a finite extension of , and extends to a morphism . Let us choose a closed point on , which we also view as a -valued point on . Choose a geometric point over , and let be an étale path connecting and . By [FC90, I Prop. 2.7], . This gives us a specialization morphism which fits into a commutative diagram below
(recall the notations in §3.4). We claim that all vertical squares are Cartesian. For the squares on the left and right, this is clear by the definition (3.4.1). For the square at the front, this is obtained by applying (22) to . Hence the remaining diagram at the back must also be Cartesian. Therefore, the surjectivity of ([Zarhin2]) implies the surjectivity of . Hence we have affirmed (22) for .
Proof.
We first prove the statement when . Without loss of generality, we may assume that can be embedded to ; moreover, as acts transitively on the set of connected components of , we may choose an embedding such that the resulting -point lies on the distinguished component (defined in (5.2.1)) of . To prove the statement we may replace by this -point. Then the statement follows from Hodge theory. Indeed, we obtain a commutative diagram999Note that we are considering every -scheme also as an -scheme via , so (resp. ) is the same as (resp. ). Similar conventions apply below.:
(23) |
The vertical maps are again cycle class maps, but this time they are isomorphisms. For the arrow on the right, we are applying the Lefschetz -theorem. Since by assumption, we obtain (20).
Now we assume that . Set . We shall construct by considering characteristic liftings of . Let be the formal completion of at . For a special endomorphism consider the following functor:
(24) |
where runs through all Artin -algebras. By [CSpin, §5.14], is represented by a closed formal subscheme of cut out by a single formal power series . Similarly, let be the formal completion of at . Then restricts to a morphism . Consider the pullback of to and define to be the functor defined by (24) with replaced by . Then we have a fiber diagram:
(25) |
In particular, is a closed formal subscheme of cut out by the pullback . Now we prove the key intermediate lemma:
Lemma (5.2.5).
Up to replacing by a power, is flat over .
Proof.
It suffices show that if does not lie in the image of , then is flat over , because otherwise up to replacing by a power, . Suppose by way of contradiction that is not flat over , which is equivalent to saying that vanishes on the entire mod disk , i.e., the formal completion of at . Let be the deformation of over . Let use write for the generic point of . Let be the connected component of which contains and let be its generic point. Since is also the completion of at , there is natural embedding of residue fields. Let be the geometric point over defined by a chosen algebraic closure of . We view it also as a geometric point over ..
Recall that we assumed that is connected in (5.2.1), so that is an isomorphism by (4.1.2). Therefore, acts trivially on . Since is -equivariant by assumption (5.2.2)(b), acts trivially on as well. Hence every element of is defined over . It follows from [FC90, I Prop. 2.7] that . By (5.1.4), . Assumption (5.2.2)(b) implies that also has constant and . Combining these observations, we must have .
Now consider the subspace , as runs through open subgroups of , so that (recall definition (5.1.2)). As the endomorphism scheme of an abelian scheme is representable and unramified over the base, every element in is defined over some finite separable extension of inside . Therefore, we obtain a well defined map . However, we note that the composite
has to be an isomorphism because . This forces the natural map to be an isomorphism. Now note that . But as we assumed that does not come from , the same has to be true for . This gives the desired contradiction. ∎
Suppose we have replaced by a power so that the above lemma holds. Following Deligne’s argument for [Del02, Cor. 1.7], we show that there exists a DVR finite flat over such that admits a -valued point. Indeed, suppose that for some complete local -algebra . As is not a zero divisor in , one may complete into a system of parameters for , where ([stacks-project, 0BWY]). Let . By [stacks-project, 00LJ], is not a zero divisor in , so that remains flat over . In particular it has zero-dimensional fibres over and hence is quasi-finite. By [stacks-project, 04GG(13)] we can write where is a finite -algebra and . Since is closed in we must have , i.e., is finite over . Now, by flatness admits a -algebra morphism for some finite extension of , but then by finiteness necessarily maps into the integral closure of in , which is the desired .101010We spell out the commutative algebra details because it is a little counterintuitive that this argument does not require to be reasonably non-singular (cf. (5.2.6)).
Let denote the point defined by the above morphism . Choose an algebraic clsoure . As is a strictly Henselian DVR, it defines an étale path connecting and . There is a compatible specialization map along (cf. [MPJumping, Prop. 3.6] and its proof), which we denote by . There is a similar specialization map of special endomorphisms. Now we have the following diagram:
(26) |
Note that , so we have shown that exists. The map does not exist yet. But by construction of , lifts to some (necessarily unique) over , and we can define to be . Note that does not depend on the choice of because its class in is completely determined by the class of in via . Repeating this construction for every , we obtain the desired map . ∎
Remark (5.2.6).
In [Del02], Deligne deduced Cor. 1.7 directly from Thm 1.6—there is no control on how singular the formal scheme in Thm 1.6 might be (here is a K3 surface over an algebraically closed field of characteristic and is the universal deformation space of the pair ). From later work [OgusCrystals, (2.2)], we do know that if is not a -th power of another line bundle and , then in Deligne’s Thm 1.6 is indeed always regular. However, as Deligne’s argument shows, this is unnecessary for one to deduce that admits a point valued over some finite flat extension of .
5.3 Proof of Theorem B
(5.3.1)
The reader may have noticed that (4.1.9) and (4.1.10) apply to geometrically connected bases. To make use of these results, we consider the following simple-minded functor, which sometimes goes by the name “Grothendieck restriction”: If is a field extension, and is a -scheme, we write for the -scheme obtained by composing the structure morphism of with the projection . Then is the left adjoint to the base change functor from -schemes to -schemes.
We will only apply this functor when . Let be a connected smooth -variety. Then its scheme of connected components is the spectrum of some number field . The natural morphism endows with the structure of an -variety. We denote this -variety by . Note that now and is geometrically connected as an -variety.
(5.3.2)
Since and have the same underlying scheme, étale sheaves or filtered flat vector bundles on are naturally identified with the corresponding structures on and vice versa and we do not distinguish them notationally. If is a -variety, then there is a canonical bijection between the sets of morphisms . Suppose now that is a morphism, and is an étale sheaf or a filtered flat vector bundle on , then is canonically identified with because as morphisms of schemes.
Proposition (5.3.3).
Let be an open subscheme. Let be a connected separated smooth -scheme of finite type with generic point . Let be a smooth projective morphism such that is a -family.
Let be a relatively ample line bundle of and let be a subspace containing the class of . Let be a point lying above and be the connected component of containing . Assume that has constant , and for every , the pairing on is self-dual. Then we have:
Here denotes the submodule of consisting of elements orthogonal to the image of in under the pairing on induced by . Recall that the big monodromy case contains (R+) = (R1) + (R2) and (CM).
Proof.
The hypothesis remains unchanged if we replace by a connected étale cover (and by a lift). Therefore, we may assume that is connected. Moreover, to prove (b), we may assume that . Indeed, replacing by might make no longer self-dual only for finitely many , but we are allowed to shrink .
Apply the set-ups in (4.1.3) to and . Let and be as defined in (4.1.6). Let be the -lattice defined by and choose a such that satisfies condition ; in case (b), we additionally require to be sufficiently small (see (4.1.6) for these notions). Note that is of the form , where runs through all primes and is a compact open subgroup of . By (4.1.4), up to replacing by a further finite connected étale cover, we assume that is admissible, i.e., the image of in lies in via the chosen isometry . Now we set to be the field such that and recall that the base point induces an embedding through which .
For (a), we may now apply (4.1.9) to to conclude that there is a period morphism together with an isomorphism which preserves the Hodge filtrations such that descends to an isomorphism over . By (5.3.2) we may view as a morphism over and as an isomorphism of étale sheaves over . Let be a prime in . Restrict to and apply the set-ups in (5.2.1). Note that by construction, is hyperspecial. Let be the integral model of over . Recall that (resp. ) is the restriction of to (resp. to ) (see (3.4.2) and (5.2.1)). The existence of allows us to apply (3.4.4) to extend to a morphism , which by construction is admissible in the sense of (5.2.2). Now we conclude by (5.2.3).
For (b) a minor adaptation is needed. Take . By (4.1.10) we still have a period morphism equipped with an isomorphism which preserves the Hodge filtrations, but does not descend all the way to . Instead, we only have that for some finite extension in , and , descends to a morphism such that
-
(i)
descends to an isomorphism ;
-
(ii)
and is étale locally isomorphic to for every other .
Set . Then by (5.3.2) again, we may view as a morphism and (i), (ii) above as statements about étale sheaves over . Note that is naturally a connected étale over of . As is self-dual at every , there exists a -scheme such that is the integral canonical model of over (cf. the first theorem of [Lovering]). By a standard spreading out argument, up to further shrinking , we may assume that is the -fiber of a smooth -scheme ; moreover, extends to an étale covering map and extends to a morphism . The reader readily checks using (i) and (ii) above that for each the localization is an -admissible period morphism in the sense of (5.2.2). Therefore, the conclusion follows from (5.2.3). ∎
We are now ready to prove Theorem B.
Proof.
Note that the conclusion of Theorem B is for . By (5.3.3) it suffices to show that there are exists an open subscheme such that after we restrict to , has constant . By combining Nagata’s compactification and Hironaka’s resolution of singularities in characteristic zero, we can find a compactification of the generic fiber such that the boundary , equipped with the reduced scheme structure, is a normal crossing divisor. For some open subscheme of , and are defined over , and becomes a relative normal crossing divisor over . This implies that for , admits a good compactification relative to in the sense of (5.1.2). Now we conclude by (5.1.3). ∎
6 Deforming Curves on Parameter Spaces
6.1 Families of Curves which homogeneously dominate a Variety
Let be an algebraically closed field. For a morphism betweem -varieties, we say that has equi-dimensional fibers if for every two points , . If is a smooth morphism between -varieties, denote by the relative tangent bundle, i.e., the dual of . If , then we simply write for , and for a -point , we write for the tangent space to emphasize that it is a fiber of .
Definition (6.1.1).
Let and be two smooth irreducible -varieties, be a smooth family of connected curves, and be a morphism with equi-dimensional fibers. Let be the maximal open subvariety of on which the composition does not vanish. Suppose that
-
(a)
the induced morphism is quasi-finite,
-
(b)
for every -point , is dense in ;
-
(c)
the morphism has equi-dimensional fibers.
Then we say that the family of curves homogeneously dominates (via the morphism ). If there exists an open dense subvariety such that the restriction homogeneously dominates , then we say that strongly dominates .
The natural morphism is induced by the identification . Roughly speaking, the family homogeneously dominates if there are curves passing through every given point on in any given direction, and the sub-family of such curves has a fixed dimension.
The notion “ strongly dominates ” is only defined for convenience, as sometimes the natural families of curves have some bad locus on of smaller dimension which does not affect applications.
Lemma (6.1.2).
Let be a smooth morphism between smooth -varieties. Let be a relative effective Cartier divisor whose total space is smooth. If is a point such that has isolated singularities, then there exists an open dense subvariety with the following property: For every unramified morphism from a smooth curve which sends a point to , the total space of the pullback family has no singularity on if .
Proof.
Since the question is étale-local in nature, we might as well assume that for , , has a single isolated singularity at a -point , and is isomorphic to near . Let ’s and ’s be the coordinates on and respectively. Suppose that is locally cut out by an equation near . That is a singularity of the fiber but not of the total space implies that at for some . One may simply take to be the open subscheme of where the coordinate of is nonzero. ∎
Definition (6.1.3).
Let be a finite type morphism between schemes.
-
(a)
Let the singular locus be the reduced closed subscheme of whose support consists of all points where fails to be smooth.111111Note that this definition is different from the one given in [stacks-project, Tag 0C3H].
-
(b)
If is in addition proper and flat, we say that the scheme-theoretic image of is the (generalized) discriminant locus of , and denote it by .
-
(c)
In the above situation, we say that is mild if it has codimension at least in and there exists a dense open subscheme such that for every geometric point on , the fiber has only isolated singularities.
Remark (6.1.4).
Note that the properness assumption on implies that is closed in . Moreover, since it is defined to be the scheme-theoretic image of a reduced scheme, it is also reduced. Its formation commutes with flat base change but not arbitrary base change: For any morphism , is always the reduced subscheme of , so they are equal if and only if the latter is reduced.
Proposition (6.1.5).
Let and be as in (6.1.2). Suppose that
-
•
the generalized discriminant variety is mild;
-
•
there is a family of smooth curves which homogeneously dominates through a morphism .
Then for a general -point , the total space of the pullback family is smooth.
Proof.
By assumption we have a diagram
Let be the subset of points such that passes through and the total space of has a singularity lying above . It is easy to see that is constructible: Let be the pullback of along . Then we have a natural morphism and is the set-theoretic image of . Endow with the structure of a reduced scheme.
It suffices to show that . Let be as in (6.1.3)(c) and for , let be as in (6.1.1)(b). Let . By (6.1.2), there exists a proper closed subvariety such that the total space of is not smooth near the fiber only if . Let be the union of the complement of and the Zariski closure of . Then is a proper closed subvariety of . Since the morphism is quasi-finite and the fiber is contained in the image of , we have
Since the image of in is contained in , and runs over an open dense subvariety of , we have that as desired. ∎
6.2 Applications of the Baire category theorem
Let be an algebraically closed field of characteristic . Set and . Choose an algebraic closure of .
Lemma (6.2.1).
Suppose that is a flat morphism between irreducible smooth -schemes of finite type. Let be a countable union of closed proper subschemes of . Let be any point and be the formal completion of at . Then the subset of points such that is not contained in is analytically dense.
Proof.
Let . By taking the union of with all its Galois conjugates, we may assume that is defined over . Let be the irreducible components of . By flatness the morphism is open, so for each there exists a proper closed subscheme such that every satisfies only if . Indeed, one may simply take to be the complement of the image of . Since each is open dense in analytic topology, we may conclude by the Baire category theorem for complete metric spaces that is analytically dense. ∎
Lemma (6.2.2).
Let and be smooth irreducible -schemes of finite type and be a countable union of closed proper subschemes of . Let be a closed point and be the formal completion of at .
Suppose that is a smooth family of geometrically connected curves over , and there is a morphism such that the family over strongly dominates . Then the subset of points such that is not contained is analytically dense.
Proof.
Again by Galois descent we may assume that for irreducible closed subschemes of . Let and . The assumption that strongly dominates implies that each is a proper closed subscheme. Now we apply the above lemma with replaced by . ∎
7 Elliptic Surfaces with
7.1 Generalities on Elliptic Surfaces
In this section we recall some basic facts about elliptic surfaces and describe their moduli. Let be an algebraically closed field of characteristic . Let be a smooth projective curve over and be an elliptic surface over with a zero section through which we also view as a curve on . The fundamental line bundle of is defined to be the dual of the normal bundle , or equivalently that of . The degree of is defined to be the height of , which we denote by . Set . There exists a pair , which is unique up to the action of by , such that is the minimal resolution of the hypersurface defined by the Weierstrass equation ([Kas, Thm 1])
(27) |
where as homogenenous coordinates on respectively. The hypersurface has at most rational double point singularities and is called the Weierstrass normal form of the original surface . If is smooth, then of course . In this paper, we only consider with .
Next, we recall that Kodaira classified all the possible singular fibers in the elliptic fibration when in [Kodaira], and his classification is well known to hold verbatim in characteristic as well. We refer the reader to [SchSh, §4] for a summary. Set . Let be a point and denote by the valuation defined by a uniformizer at . The only facts we shall need from loc. cit. are the following:
Proposition (7.1.1).
-
(a)
The fiber is singular if and only if vanishes at , i.e., .
-
(b)
is of type if and only if , and .
-
(c)
is of -type if and only if and .
-
(d)
If is a singular fiber of any other type, .
-
(e)
If is of -type or -type, then . In other words, the singularity on is not a surface singularity.
-
(f)
If is of -type, then has a unique ODP singularity given by contracting the irreducible component not meeting the zero section.
The degree of the discriminant is . Recall that the genus is equal to the irregularity and we have . Therefore, elliptic surfaces with fall into two types:
-
•
and . These are elliptic K3 surfaces.
-
•
. These surfaces have Kodaira dimension .
We are interested in the latter class. Note that although these surfaces are elliptic fibrations over genus curves, one should not confuse them with bielliptic surfaces, which are of Kodaira dimension .
(7.1.2)
For future reference we introduce some notation. Let be a base scheme and be a vector bundle over . We denote by the relative affine space over defined by and the open part of minus the zero section. Given a sequence of numbers such that ’s are invertible in and vector bundles such that , we denote by the resulting weighted projective stack, i.e., the quotient stack of -action on given by
and by the coarse moduli space of . It is well known that this coarse moduli space can be constructed explicitly by applying the relative Proj functor to a sheaf of graded algebras over . We omit the details. If is not specified, then it is assumed to be .
Set-up (7.1.3).
Let be a -scheme, be a family of smooth projective curves over of genus and be a relative line bundle on of degree . Assume that and . Let denote the vector bundle for . Let be the subscheme of defined by the Weierstrass equation (27) in the obvious way. Let be the -action on defined by
(28) |
Let denote the quotient stack of the -action . Then descends to an algebraic substack of . Note that , and hence , admit natural morphisms to . Set (see (6.1.3)). As a quasi-cone, it defines a closed substack in . Let denote the open complement of in .
Remark (7.1.4).
Note that with fixed , the formation of and naturally commutes with base change among -schemes. We will implicitly use this for the rest of Sec. 7. However, a priori and might not commute with non-flat base change as they can become non-reduced (cf. (6.1.4)). Much of Sec. 7 is devouted to giving conditions to exclude this possibility. The key intermediate result is (7.3.4), which will play an important role in the proof of Theorem A.
We remark that is only “stacky” because of the base.
Lemma (7.1.5).
Let be an -scheme and be a morphism. Then the pullback , and hence , are flat projective schemes over .
Proof.
The reader can check that is in fact a -bundle over . Therefore, the pullback is a -bundle over the scheme . Being a closed substack of the scheme , has to be a projective scheme. The flatness of is clear, and one deduces the flatness of using that it is locally cut out by a single equation, and its geometric fibers are of codimension (cf. [stacks-project, 00MF]). ∎
Proposition (7.1.6).
The morphism is smooth.
Proof.
As is flat over , it suffices to check smoothness of geometric fibers. Hence we may assume that , where is an algebraically closed field of characteristic . Let us simply write for . Choose a point and . Choose a uniformizer of at and bases for respectively. Then the formal complection of at can be identified with , where .
By choosing a local -generator of at , we turn ’s and ’s into elements in . Let be the affine coordinates of in . Then the restriction of to can be identified with the subscheme of defined by the equation
(29) |
Let be the special point of . The singularity of the (generalized) elliptic curve defined by the above equation when , ’s and ’s all vanish cannot appear on the chart. So we may set in the above equation and consider the resulting scheme in . Since for some , we deduce that the partial derivative remains nonzero on the special fiber. This implies that the total space of the restriction of to is smooth. But the choice of is arbitrary, so is smooth. ∎
7.2 Nonlinear Bertini Theorems for Families of Elliptic Surfaces
In this section, remains an algebraically closed field of characteristic .
Proposition (7.2.1).
Let be a smooth projective curve of genus over and let be a line bundle on with degree . Set for every . For every , consider the closed subset of defined by ( is defined by as before)
and endow it with the reduced subscheme structure. Likewise, let be the diagonal and define a closed subscheme in by
If , then we have the following:
-
(a)
has codimension for .
-
(b)
has two irreducible components and characterized by conditions and respectively.
-
(c)
has codimension .
Proof.
Recall that by the Riemann-Roch theorem, for any line bundle on , if , then ; if , then unless .
Fix any point and consider the projection . It suffices to show that the fiber over , viewed naturally as a closed subscheme of , has codimension . We identify the completion of along with by choosing a uniformizer . After choosing a local generator of , we may consider the Taylor series of any , which is a power series . By the first paragraph, for and , we have
Therefore, we may choose a basis for such that for and forms a basis for . We may assume that and modulo . We choose a basis in an entirely similar way.
With the given choices of bases, we use and for the coordinates of and respectively, so that can be expressed as
(30) |
Then the fiber () is cut out in by the first equations from below:
(31) |
The statement (a) is clear for . For , it is clear that contains the following subscheme
such that the fiber of over is simply cut out by . Let be the affine space with coordinates and be the cuspidal curve defined by . Then the fiber of over a point in is given by a codimension hyperplane in . This implies that is irreducible of codimension in , and we denote this component by . Note that this implies (b). To see the case for (a), just note that does not vanish identically on both and .
Finally we treat (c). We consider the projection and take a point . Denote the fiber of over by . We assume first that . This condition is automatically satisfied when and ensures that for . Then we may choose with the following vanishing orders:
|
(32) |
Then we complete to a basis of by adjoining a basis for . Let be uniformizers of the completions of along and respectively. After choosing local generators of , we may consider Taylor series and , and assume that and . Choose an entirely similar basis for and express again as in (30). Then the defining equations for in are
(33) |
By the same argument for the case in (a), the above equations define a codimension subscheme. The point is that the variables with indices do not interfere with those with .
It remains to deal with the case when and . Note that in this case , so the condition defines a closed subscheme of of codimension at least . Therefore, it is enough to show that the codimension of is at least . Note that we are able to choose a basis just as before, but this time choose with the following vanishing orders:
|
(34) |
and complete it to a basis of by adjoining a basis of . Assume that and . Then the conditions and give us equations which are necessarily satisfied by :
(35) |
It is clear that these indeed cut out a subscheme of codimension . ∎
Proposition (7.2.2).
Assume . Apply set-up(7.1.3) to . The resulting discriminant is a proper subvariety of . If , then has a unique irreducible component of maximal dimension; moreover, for a general point on , is smooth away from a single ODP.
Proof.
As , above is the same as in (7.2.1), and we use the notations from (7.2.1) and the results in (7.1.1) throughout the proof below.
Note that for such that does not vanish identically on , is singular if and only if its elliptic fibration has a reducible singular fiber. It is clear that is contained in the image of in , and hence has codimension at least . If , then by (7.2.1)(c), there exists an open dense subset such that if , has at most one singular fiber not of -type. If moreover this singular fiber is of -type, then is smooth and . Therefore, the only possible irreducible component of maximal dimension in is the Zariski closure of the image of . This implies the second statement in the proposition. ∎
7.3 Mod Behavior of Discriminants
Set-up (7.3.1).
Suppose that in (7.1.3) is a local ring, so that the vector bundles and are trivial -modules. By choosing -generators for and , we identify with , where and . Assume that as in the results in §7.2. Consider . Let be the chart on , and let denote the section defined by . Let be the -module of degree homogenous polynomials in or equivalently the module of degree polynomials in . Consider the open subscheme consisting of the points of the form
Then it is clear that there is a natural morphism . By setting in the polynomials ’s and ’s, we also obtain an -morphism . Recall that denotes the affine space minus the zero section. This morphism fits into a commutative diagram
(36) |
For the content below, recall (6.1.1) and definition of and in (7.1.3). Assume that is an algebraically closed field of characteristic .
Proposition (7.3.2).
Suppose that . Then the family strongly dominates via . Moreover, for a general point , .
Proof.
The first statement is an exercise of dimension counting, so we omit the details. For the second statement, it suffices to exhibit a single such as the condition is open. Note that the automorphism group of naturally acts on . We start with any point be such that for some point , . Then we can always apply an automorphism of to switch and . This gives us a point and by construction . ∎
Remark (7.3.3).
We expect that to always be of codimension exactly in , but not smaller. We make a simple observation for a case when this is easily guaranteed: Suppose that in (7.3.2). If for a general point on , the of the restriction of to defines a non-isotrivial VHS, then . Indeed, otherwise for a general , the family is a smooth family over , which cannot support a non-isotrivial VHS.
Lemma (7.3.4).
Suppose that and in set-up(7.3.1) is taken to be for . Assume that has codimension in over . Then for a general -point , has the following properties:
-
(a)
, the total space of the family is smooth and every fiber has at most a single ODP singularity.
-
(b)
, or equivalently , is reduced.
-
(c)
For every lifting , is étale over , so that the open subcurve has a good compactification relative to .
Proof.
Since is proper over , it is not hard to see that is also of codimension in . We break into 3 steps.
Step 1: By (7.2.2) and (6.1.4), the irreducible components of maximal dimension of and are unique. Let us denote them by and respectively. Moreover, by (7.2.2), there exists an open dense subscheme , such that for every , has at most a single ODP singularity. In particular, by (7.3.2), as well as (6.1.5) and its proof, for a general point , , the total space of the pullback family is smooth, and the image of only intersects on , so that every singular fiber of over has a single ODP; moreover, as , the total space of is smooth. Hence we may conclude (a).
Step 2: Next, we show the following claim : If is a general point, for any lifting , is flat over . Let be the irreducible components of such that is the component which contains . We claim that contains as well. To simplify notation, let us write as . Then is cut out by a single polynomial in the coordinates of the affine space . By minimally clearing denominators, we may assume that the coefficients of are defined in and generate . Using the fact that is affine and is a UFD, one checks that the Zariski closure of in contains the vanishing locus of . Note that is weighted-homogeneous, so at least contains the origin. In paricular, is surjective. By [stacks-project, Tag 0B2J], . This implies that . By the uniqueness of as an irreducible component of maximal dimension, we conclude that . By applying [stacks-project, Tag 0B2J] again, we also conclude that for any , has codimension in .
Set be the complement of the closed subscheme . Then is dense in . As is general and the family strongly dominates , we may assume that the intersection is transverse and lies in . Now we can prove the claim . Indeed, note that is a Weil divisor, and hence also a Cartier divisor of , as is regular. This implies that is everywhere locally cut out in by a single equation. Since is of codimension , is flat over by [stacks-project, Tag 00MF].
Step 3: Finally, we show (b) and (c) simultaneously. Note that if we show (c) for some , then we can already conclude (b), which conversely implies (c) for all . Indeed, is isomorphic to for some . If is reduced, then by Hensel’s lemma has to be ad disjoint union of several copies of . Hence it suffices to show (c) for some , for which we may assume that the generic fiber intersects transversely. What we are using here is that strongly dominates and the points on which lift are Zariski dense on .
Since is finite and flat, . As is reduced, is the number of closed points on . Therefore, to show that is reduced, it suffices to show that has the same number of closed points, i.e., . Now we compute by topology. Choose a prime . By combining the Leray spectral sequence and the Grothendieck-Ogg-Shafarevich formula, we have
where is a geometric generic point over , and denotes the alternating sum of Swan conductors
Since for every , is smooth away from an ODP, [WeilI, §4.2] tells us that the local monodromy action on factors through and hence is tamely ramified as . This implies that the Swan conductors all vanish. Moreover, by loc. cit. we also know that , so
(37) |
By considering how singularities might degenerate, we easily see that the fiber of over each point in has at most an ODP singularity. Therefore, by the same computation as above, for and a geometric generic point of , we have
(38) |
Using the smooth and proper base change theorem for étale cohomology, it is not hard to see that and . Hence we conclude that as desired. ∎
Note that the discussion of Swan conductors fundamentally uses the assumption. Of course it is irrelevant here because we are working with the , but we remark that in [Saitodisc, Thm 4.2] the non-reducedness of the relevant discriminant scheme modulo can indeed be explained by the fact that ordinary quadratic singularities behave differently in characteristic .121212This was explained in the appendix in the earlier arXiv version of the paper, which will be published separately. We also remark that for results in §7.2 crucially uses the assumption, which is indeed satisfied by the case we care about ().
7.4 Proof of Theorem A
In this section we work with the following set-up:
Set-up (7.4.1).
Let be the moduli stack of the pair of a genus curve together with a degree line bundle (i.e., an elliptic curve). Let be the -scheme defined by
Then the Weierstrass equation equips with a surjective morphism . Let be the restriction of the universal family over to . Apply the constructions in (7.1.3) with this triple and define the objects (), and accordingly. Below we write as , the open subscheme as , and the restriction of to as .
Remark (7.4.2).
For any algebraically closed field of characteristic and elliptic surface over with , there exists a point such that is the minimal model of . Moreover, there are no reducible fibers in the elliptic fibration of if and only if . The choice of is unique up to the -action on given by where is the relative coordinate on .
We need a lower bound on the rank of the Kodaira-Spencer map, or equivalently the image of the period morphism over .131313This bound is now obsolete due to a more recent preprint [EGW], but we keep it here to illustrate that the proof of (7.4.4) below works under much weaker inputs, in case the reader wishes to study other varieties (cf. (1.0.4)). Note also that the period map over in [EGW] is not flat, despite being generically étale (Cor. 5.1 ibid), and its mod properties are unclear, so computations in §7.2, 7.3 remain necessary for the current method.
Lemma (7.4.3).
For a general and , the Kodaira-Spencer map
has rank at least .
Proof.
This follows a construction of Ikeda and the Artin-Brieskorn resolution. In [Ikeda], Ikeda constructed a subfamily of elliptic surfaces over with the given invariants using bielliptic curves of genus . Let be a bielliptic curve of genus , equipped with an involution such that is a smooth genus curve . On the symmetric square of , also lifts to an involution . Consider the surface , which is shown to be a projective surface of Kodaira dimension with ODPs. Its minimal resolution is an elliptic surface with . By Prop. 2.9 in loc. cit., the morphism can be recovered from . Note however the Weierstrass model of is singular, so is not given by a point on .
Note that for every -point with image in , is given by a pair . Let be the open subscheme which consists of those such that does not vanish identically on the base curve . Then is the Weierstrass normal form of an elliptic surface and by [Kas, Thm 1] has at most rational double point singularities. By applying the Artin-Brieskorn resolution [Artin-Res] to , we obtain a smooth and proper algebraic space , where is an algebraic space which admits a morphism to bijective on geometric points. Moreover, [Artin-Res, Thm 2] tells us that for any -point of which maps to a point of , the Henselianization of at maps surjectively to that of at . Let be a resolution of singularities of and pullback the family to .
Note that all elliptic surfaces which can be constructed as in the first paragraph can be found as fibers of this family over . Let be the period domain parametrizing Hodge structures of K3-type on the integral lattice given by the Betti cohomology of any complex elliptic surface with . Let be the universal cover of . Then up to an action of there is a well defined period map . The moduli space of bielliptic curves of genus over is -dimensional, so [Ikeda, Thm 1.1(1)] implies that the period image of is of dimension . Since is open and dense, the discussion on the Henselization of at -points in the preceeding paragraph implies that the preimage of in is also open and dense. This implies that the preimage of in also has period image of by a continuity argument. ∎
We are now ready to prove (a more general form of) Theorem A:
Theorem (7.4.4).
Assume that is a field finitely generated over for and let be a separable closure. Let be an elliptic surface over with . If all fibers in the elliptic fibration of are irreducible, then the Tate conjecture holds for .
Proof.
Let be the generic point of . Let and be the classes in such that (resp. ) is given by a smooth fiber (resp. zero section) in the elliptic fibration of . We may polarize the family with the subspace , as it contains the class of for some relatively ample line bundle . Since and , one deduces that for any , the lattice is self-dual for every . Note that is clearly connected, and by (7.4.3) and (2.2.5), the family has maximal monodromy, as defined in (2.2.3). By (7.4.2), it suffices to apply (5.3.3)(a) to the family , for which we only need to prove that has constant over . We do so in two steps:
Step 1: Fix a prime , set , and choose an isomorphism . It suffices to show that there exists a smooth connected -curve with a morphism to such that (recall (5.1.1) and (5.1.2))
-
(i)
, and
-
(ii)
has a good compactification over .
Assume the existence of such curves for the moment, we first show how the theorem follows. Note that and are both irreducible. Choose a base point which lies over the generic point of . Let be a geometric point over the generic point of . Since specializes to , ; moreover, as every element in is stabilized by an open subgroup of , . On the other hand, as is a functor, we have by default. But the curve has constant because it has a good relative compactification (5.1.3), so we have
This implies that , i.e., has constant .
Step 2: It remains to construct the curve which satisfies (i) and (ii). Let be the VHS on given by . We say that an irreducible smooth -variety admitting an understood morphism to admissible if its image is not contained in the Noether-Lefschetz loci of and the restriction is non-isotrivial. This implies, by (5.1.4), that .
We construct in two steps. First, let be any point and be the formal completion of at . We claim that for some , is admissible. Indeed, we first observe that since , (7.4.3) implies that for a general point , is non-isotrivial. Note that the -points given by an analytically dense subset of are Zariski dense on (and hence also on ). As the Noether-Lefschetz (NL) loci of is a countable union of proper closed subvarieties, we may now apply (6.2.1) to the case being and being the NL loci to conclude that the desired lifting exists.
Next, we take the base in the context of (7.3.1) to be above (and hence and in (7.3.1) are and respectively in the current context). Then we obtain an irreducible smooth -scheme and a morphism such that defines a strongly dominating families of curves on by (7.3.2). Let be a general -point on such that the conclusion of (7.3.4) holds. Since is non-isotrivial, for a general , the restriction of to is also non-isotrivial. Similarly, applying (6.2.2) to the NL loci on again, we conclude that for some lifting , is admissible. Therefore, if we set to be , then it indeed satisfies condition (i), and (7.3.4)(c) guarantees that this also satisfies (ii), as desired. ∎
Remark (7.4.5).
Let be an irreducible component of the Noether-Lefschetz (NL) loci on and take to be the Zariski closure of in . Then by specialization of line bundles we know that every geometric fiber of over has Picard rank . By the Shioda-Tate formula141414See Landesman’s note people.math.harvard.edu/~landesman/assets/shioda-tate.pdf for a proof of the formula over finite fields., this implies that, if is a finite field, and is the generic fiber of the elliptic fibration on , then up to replacing by a finite extension . Moreover, as has even second Betti number, the Weil conjecture implies that is also even, so up to extending again we must in fact have .
Note that is of codimension in , so that has relative dimension over . The -action on stabilizes and the quotient gives rise to a -dimensional subfamily in the coarse moduli of elliptic surfaces with over (cf. (7.4.2)). By [Moonen, Prop. 6.4], the NL loci has infinitely many components, so there are lots of these examples.
8 Surfaces with and
Recall our notations for weighted projective spaces in (7.1.2) and set . Throughout this section, denotes an arbitrary algebraically closed field of characteristic unless otherwise specified.
Theorem (8.0.1).
Let be a minimal surface over with and . Then the canonical model of only has rational double point singularities. Moreover, if we let be the coordinates of , then for