Swan conductors for \(p\)-adic differential modules. I: A local construction (Q1005845)

Let \(E\) be a complete discretely valued field of characteristic \(p>0\) and let \(k\) denote the residue field of \(E\). We do not assume that \(k\) is perfect. Let \(E^{\text{sep}}\) be a separable closure of \(E\) and let \(E^{\text{unr}}/E\) be the maximum unramified subextension of \(E^{\text{sep}}/E\). This paper extends the classical theory of higher ramification to arbitrary Galois subextensions of \(E^{\text{sep}}/E\), without the usual restriction to extensions of local fields which induce separable residue field extensions. (This assumption is useful because it excludes ramification which arises from inseparable residue field extensions, and thus allows one to concentrate on the action of Galois on uniformizers.) Let \(V\) be a free \({\mathbb Z}_p\)-module of finite rank with an action by \(G_E=\text{Gal}(E^{\text{sep}}/E)\) and let \(\rho: G_E\rightarrow \text{End}_{{\mathbb Z}_p}(V)\) be the corresponding representation. Let \(L\) be the fixed field of the kernel of \(\rho\), and assume that the image of the inertia group \(\text{Gal}(E^{\text{sep}}/E^{\text{unr}})\) under \(\rho\) is finite. The author defines a Swan conductor for \(\rho\) and shows that it must be a nonnegative integer. He also shows that the definition he gives agrees with the usual definition of Swan conductor in the case where the residue field extension induced by \(L/E\) is separable. It is not known how the definition given in this paper relates to other generalizations of the Swan conductor, or whether the results of this paper can be extended to extensions of local fields of characteristic 0. Using the generalized definition of the Swan conductor the author defines an upper ramification filtration \(\{G_E^r\}_{r\geq0}\) for \(G_E\). This filtration is the same as the usual ramification filtration in the case where the residue field of \(E\) is perfect. Let \(r>0\) and let \(G^{r+}\) denote the closure of \(\bigcup_{s>r}G^s\). It is shown that the quotient \(G_E^r/G_E^{r+}\) is an abelian group which is killed by \(p\), just as in the classical setting. The definition of the Swan conductor of \(\rho\) depends on an intricate construction which uses \(\rho\) to produce a pair \((D^{\dagger}(\rho),\nabla)\), where \(D^{\dagger}(\rho)\) is a locally free coherent sheaf on a rigid analytic annulus and \(\nabla\) is an integrable connection on \(D^{\dagger}(\rho)\). The author defines a ``differential Swan conductor'' for such pairs by decomposing them into simpler pieces on a sufficiently small sub-annulus. The Swan conductor of \(\rho\) is then defined to be the differential Swan conductor of \((D^{\dagger}(\rho),\nabla)\).