On the fundamental group scheme (Q1608568)

This paper is devoted to the study of the algebraic (or étale) fundamental group of a scheme. This notion was introduced by A. Grothendieck in the 1960s. Later on, in the 1980s, M. Nori has introduced the concept of the fundamental group scheme of a reduced and connected scheme \(X\) over a field \(k\). Both constructions coincide when \(\text{char}(k)=0\), whereas they definitely differ in characteristic \(p>0\). However, Nori has conjectured that two particular, fundamental properties of Grothendieck's étale fundamental group \(\pi_1(X,x)\) have some analogues in the theory of fundamental group schemes \(\pi(X,x)\), which read as follows: (1) \(\pi(X_k^\times Y,(x,y))= \pi(X,x)_k^\times \pi(Y,y)\) as group schemes; (2) If \(X\) is a complete, reduced and connected scheme over an algebraically closed field \(k\), and if \(k'\) is an algebraically closed field extension of \(k\), then the canonical homomorphism of group schemes \[ \pi(X_{k'},x) \to\pi(X_k,x)\times_k \text{Spec}(k') \] is an isomorphism. Now, in the article under review, the authors show that conjecture (1) is indeed true, whilst conjecture (2) is false (in characteristic \(p>0)\). As for the proofs, the authors use a fine analysis of the Tannaka category of stable vector bundles on the related schemes.