Geometric non-vanishing (Q706147)

The author employs geometric methods to prove that certain motivic \(L\)-functions over function fields do not vanish at certain points. Because of the Langlands dictionary as established by L.~Lafforgue, the results can be carried over to automorphic \(L\)-functions. Let \(C\) be a smooth, proper, absolutely connected curve over a finite extension \(k\) of \(\mathbb F_p\) (\(p\) prime), \(q=\text{Card}\,k\), \(F=k(C)\) the function field of \(C\), \(\bar F\) a separable algebraic closure of \(F\), \(k_n\subset\bar F\) the degree-\(n\) extension of \(k\), \(k_\infty\) their union, \(F_n\) the compositum \(Fk_n\), and \(F_\infty=Fk_\infty\). Let \(\rho\) be an \(l\)-adic (\(l\) prime \(\neq p\)) representation of \(\text{Gal}(\bar F| F)\) which is unramified away from finitely many places of \(F\) and absolutely irreducible when restricted to \(\text{Gal}(\bar F| F_\infty)\). For any finite extension \(K\) of \(F\) in \(\bar F\), write \(L(\rho, K, s)\) for the \(L\)-function of \(\rho| _{\text{Gal}(\bar F| K)}\). Fix an integer \(d>0\) prime to \(p\) and a complex number \(a\in{\mathbb C}\). A weak version of the author's main result says -- under the assumption that \(d| q-1\) and that \(\rho\) is everywhere at worst tamely ramified -- that there are infinitely many integers \(n\) for which there exists an \(f\in F_n^\times\) such that the extension \(F_n(f^{1/d})\) has degree \(d\) over \(F_n\) and such that the ratio \(L(\rho,F_n(f^{1/d}),s)/L(\rho,F_n,s)\) does not vanish at \(s=a\) (Theorem~1.1). The author explores various strengthenings of this result. First, under the hypothesis ``\(d| q-1\)'', which allows one to write the \(L\)-ratio in question as a product of twists \(L(\rho\otimes\chi,F_n,s)\) by characters of the order-\(d\) cyclic group \(\text{Gal}(F_n(f^{1/d})| F_n)\), the result amounts to saying that these twists do not vanish at \(s=a\). In the main theorem, this hypothesis is dropped, leading the author to consider twists by representations of \(\text{Gal}(\bar F| F_n)\) of degree \(>1\). The second strengthening involves imposing local conditions on the extension \(F_n(f^{1/d})| F_n\) at finitely many places, such as its splitting, inertness, or ramification behaviour. The third strengthening gives the result for all sufficiently large~\(n\), not just for infinitely many~\(n\). It may happen that under certain conditions the \(L\)-ratio is forced to vanish at \(s=a\)~; the author shows that then the order of vanishing is~\(1\). The paper was motivated by the desire to reduce the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for those elliptic curves \(E\) over \(F\) which do not come over \(\bar F\) from \(k_\infty\) and whose \(L\)-function has at most a simple zero at \(s=1\) to the Gross-Zagier situation of a simple zero by passing to a suitable finite extension \(K\) of \(F\) (cf.~Theorem~1.2).