A refinement of Christol's theorem for algebraic power series (Q2114140)

The main result of the paper is the following theorem: Let \(p\) be a prime and let \(A\) be the field extension of \(\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}(t)\) consisting of algebraic Laurent series over \(\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}\), and let \(B\) be the subring of \(A\) consisting of algebraic power series with sparse support. Then we have the following: (a) \(B\) is the smallest non-trivial \(\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}\)-subalgebra of \(A\) that possesses the following closure properties: (P1) If \(F(t)\in B\) and \(F(0)=0\) then \(F(t)+F(t^p)+F(t^{p^2})+\ldots\in B\); (P2) If \(F(t)\in B\) and \(\alpha\in\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}\) then \(F(\alpha t)\in B\); (P3) If \(F(t)\in B\) and \(t^dF(t^c)\in A\) with \(c\in \mathbb{Q}_{>0}\) and \(d\in \mathbb{Q}\), then \(t^dF(t^c)\in B\); (b) If \(F(t)\) is a power series with coefficients in \(\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}\) then \(F(t)\in B\) if and only if there is some \(j\geq 0\) such that for \(G(t)=F(t^{p^j})\) the following hold: (i) the Galois closure of \(G(t)\) over the field \(K=\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}(t^{\pm 1/n},~n\geq 1,p\not/n)\) has degree a power of \(p\); (ii) the extension \(K(G(t))/K\) is unramified outside of \(0\) and \(\infty\); (iii) \(G(t)\) is integral over the Laurent polynomial ring \(\overline{\mathbb{F}_p}[t^{\pm 1}]\).