Extended Euler congruence (Q1035297)

In his paper [``On the matricial version of Fermat-Euler congruences'', Jpn. J. Math. (3) 1, No. 1, 1--24 (2006; Zbl 1168.05003)], \textit{V. I. Arnold} stated a matricial generalization of Euler's congruence: \[ \text{Tr}(A^{p^n}) \equiv \text{Tr}(A^{p^{n-1}}) \bmod{p^n}. \] He did not prove this equation in general but he proved some special cases and showed evidence to support his Conjecture. In [``On some number-theoretic conjectures of V. Arnold'', Jpn. J. Math. (3) 2, No. 2, 297--302 (2007; Zbl 1168.05004)], \textit{E. B. Vinberg} gave a proof of the conjecture which made it a Theorem. In the present paper Deligne also gives a full proof of the Theorem by generalizing it even further, to matrices with elements that are Witt vectors. First Deligne observes that one may reduce to the case where the matrix does not have multiple eigenvalues. Then he eliminates the zero eigenvalues, so the identity can be reduced to an identity for a diagonal matrix. Finally he therefor only has to prove the Theorem for the case the size of the matrix N equals 1. This boils down to showing that for \(a \in W_n(k)\), \(k\) algebraically closed of characteristic \(p\), \(a^{p^{n-1}}\) has only a non-zero component on which the Frobenius acts then as a \(p\)th power.