Rost nilpotence and étale motivic cohomology (Q1644971)

Let \(X\) be a smooth projective scheme over a field \(k\) and let \({\mathrm{Chow}}(k)\) be the the category of Chow motives over \(k\). Let \(E/k\) be a field extension and \(X_E=X{\times}_{\mathrm{Spec}k}\, {\mathrm{Spec}E}.\) The Rost nilpotence principle is the statement that for any field extension \(E/k\) the kernel of the homomorphism \({\mathrm{End}}_{{\mathrm{Chow}}(k)}(X)\rightarrow {\mathrm{End}}_{{\mathrm{Chow}}(E)}(X)\) consists of nilpotence elements. The authors review the situations for which the Rost nilpotence principle holds and prove a general cohomological version (for schemes of arbitrary dimension) of this. More precisely, they show that if \(X\) is a scheme over a perfect field and \({\alpha} \in {\mathrm{End}}_{\mathrm{Chow}(k)}(X)\) is a correspondence such that \({\alpha}_E\in {\mathrm{End}}_{\mathrm{Chow}(E)}(X_E)\) is trivial then the action of \(\alpha\) on the Lichtenbaum cohomology groups of \(X{\times}_{k}X\) is nilpotent, after inverting exponential characteristic. The main technical tool for the proof is the Hochschild-Serre spectral sequence. The étale motivic analogue of the Rost nilpotence yields a new proof of the original Rost theorem for surfaces and for birationally ruled threefolds over a field of characteristic zero.