Effective methods for vanishing cycles of \(p\)-cyclic covers of the \(p\)-adic line. (Q1421809)

The author continues his studies of \(p\)-cyclic coverings of the projective line over a \(p\)-adic field that he began in [Manuscr. Math. 106, No. 2, 151--175 (2001; Zbl 1065.14508)]. Writing such a covering in the form \(y^p = f(x)\) the basic tool is to approximate \(f\) by a \(p\)-th power \(h^p\). The author calls the branch locus \(B\) of the covering \(X\to\mathbb P^1\) split if \(f(x)\) can be written as a product of two polynomials both of which are reasonably close to a \(p\)-th power. He presents an algorithm to decide whether \(B\) is split or not. The main results of the paper concern the stable reduction \(\overline X\) of a \(p\)-cyclic covering \(X\to\mathbb P^1\): the dual graph of \(\overline X\) is a tree if and only if \(B\) is not split. A refinement of this result determines the number of cycles of the dual graph in terms of splitting data. In particular \(X\) is a Mumford curve if and only if \(B\) is totally split.