A family of étale coverings of the affine line (Q1924262)

In the note the following is proved. Let \(C\) be the completed algebraic closure of the local field \(\mathbb{F}_q ((1/T))\), where \(q\geq 4\). Then the algebraic fundamental group of the affine line \(\mathbb{A}^1/C\) is a quotient of \(SL(2,\widehat A)/ \{\pm 1\}\). Here \(\widehat A = \varprojlim A/I\) is the completion of \(A=\mathbb{F}_q [T]\) with respect to the ideal topology. The proof uses the known structure of Drinfeld modular curves and their coverings.