On Galois representations arising from towers of coverings of \(\mathbb P^1\backslash \{0,1,\infty \}\) (Q1071079)

A new way is proposed to describe, universally, the \(\ell\)-adic Galois representations associated to each ``almost pro-\(\ell\) tower'' of étale coverings of \(\mathbb P^1\setminus \{0,1,\infty \}\). This generalizes the universal power series for Jacobi sums which arises from the tower of Fermat curves of degree \(\ell^ n\) \((n\to \infty)\) [cf. the preceding work of the author in Ann. Math. (2) 123, 43--106 (1986; Zbl 0595.12003)], and contains the case of the tower of modular curves of level \(2m\ell^ n\) (\(m\) fixed, \(n\to \infty)\) as another typical special case. As a fundamental tool, an ``almost pro-\(\ell\) version'' of the theorems of Blanchfield and of Lyndon in Fox's free differential calculus is established and used.