Étale Galois covers of affine smooth curves. The geometric case of a conjecture of Shafarevich. On Abhyankar's conjecture (Q1895693)

The first problem considered in this paper is the Shafarevich conjecture: ``The absolute Galois group over the maximal cyclotomic extension \(K^{\text{cycl}}\) of a global field \(K\) is profinite free''. The geometric version of this is a special case of the following conjecture: ``Let \(K\mid \kappa\) be a function field of one variable over an algebraically closed field \(\kappa\). Then the absolute Galois group of \(K\) is profinite free''. This conjecture is known to be true if \(\text{char } \kappa=0\) and its proof (by A. Douady) uses the structure theorem of \(\pi_1 (U)\) for small affine opens \(U\) of the projective smooth model \(Z\) of \(K\mid \kappa\) (if \(r=\) number of points in \(Z- U\), \(\pi_1 (U)\) is the profinite group on \(2g (Z)+ r-1\) generators). This theorem is false for \(\text{char } \kappa=0\), and the precise structure of \(\pi_1 (U)\) is not known. -- The conjecture is proved as a consequence of the following: Theorem A: Any finite split embedding problem \((\gamma, \alpha)\) for \(G_K\) has proper solutions -- where a finite split embedding problem \((\gamma, \alpha)\) for a profinite group \(G\) is a diagram \(B@> \alpha >> A@< \gamma <<G\) of profinite groups where \(\alpha\) and \(\gamma\) are surjective and \(B\) is finite, while a proper solutions is a surjective homomorphism \(\beta: G\to B\), with \(\alpha \beta= \gamma\). -- Further a study of embedding problems is undertaken to give a second theorem which gives a finer description of the situation when \(\ker (\alpha)\) is a quotient of \(\pi_1 (\mathbb{A}^1_\kappa)\). The remarkable consequence of this second theorem is a proof of Abhyankar's conjecture: ``A finite group \(B\) is a quotient of \(\pi_1(U)\) (notation as above) if and only if \(p(B)\) is a quotient of \(\pi_1 (U)\)'' (where \(p(B)\) is the subgroup of \(B\) generated by all the Sylow subgroups of \(B\)).