Norm varieties (Q2491742)

In the introduction of this article the authors emphasize that they are presenting part of Markus Rost's work on norm varieties. This work is a crucial part of Voevodsky's proof of the Bloch-Kato conjecture. The authors further comment that this provides a proof of the inductive step in the Bloch-Kato conjecture. The statement of the Bloch-Kato conjecture relates Milnor \(K\)-theory \(\operatorname{mod} l\) and étale cohomology and has many deep applications in algebraic and arithmetic geometry cohomology. The authors prove the following theorem of Rost: Let \(l\) be a prime number and \(k\) be a field of characteristic zero that contains a primitive \(l\)-th root of unity. Then for any nontrivial \(n\)-symbol \(a=\{a_1,\dots,a_n\} \in K_n^M(k)/l\) there exists a splitting variety \(X\) with certain additional properties: \(X\) is generic with respect to splitting fields having no finite extensions of degree prime to \(l\), the degree of its top Milnor class is not divisible by \(l^2\) and a certain motivic cohomology group of \(X\) consists of units. A splitting variety is a variety \(X\) where the symbol \(a\) vanishes in the function field \(k(X)\). Such varieties occur also in the proof of the theorem of Merkurjev-Suslin. The construction of \(X\) in this paper is done by an inductive procedure which involves symmetric powers. The proof of some properties of \(X\) makes use of Rost's chain lemma. The authors also establish Rost's degree formula again.