Cohomologically rigid local systems and integrality (Q1618274)

A cohomologically rigid (complex) local system is rigid. Over a smooth projective variety, \textit{C. T. Simpson} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 75, 5--95 (1992; Zbl 0814.32003)] conjectured that rigid local systems should be motivic, and thus irreducible rigid local systems should be defined over a ring of integers. The authors prove a variant of this conjecture, Theorem 1.1 in the article, that says when the variety is quasiprojective, any irreducible cohomologically rigid complex local system with finite determinant and quasi-unipotent local monodromies at infinity is integral. This result is proved in the projective case in an earlier paper also written by the authors [``Rigid connections and $\mathbf{F}$-isocrystals'', Preprint , \url{arXiv:1707.00752}], which only invokes \textit{V. Drinfeld}'s existence theorem [Mosc. Math. J. 12, No. 3, 515--542 (2012; Zbl 1271.14028)] on companions, see [\textit{K. S. Kedlaya}, ``Étale and crystalline companions. I'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1811.00204}] for the latest on companions. The strategy used in the projective case is summarized in the introduction. It relies on a counting argument on the isomorphism classes of cohomologically rigid local systems, which are finitely many. To generalize this to the quasiprojective case with quasi-unipotent monodromies at infinity, Prop. 2.3 in the article, which is attributed to Deligne, is crucial, as there are again finitely many isomorphism classes of cohomological rigid local systems, with the weights and monodromy at infinity being controlled.