The tame site of a scheme (Q2225234)

The authors introduce the \textit{tame site} \((X/S)_t\) of a scheme \(X\) (over a base scheme \(S\)). It lies in between the Nisnevich and étale topology of \(X\), whose coverings are called \textit{tame coverings}. More precisely, we have natural morphisms of sites \[X_{\mathrm{ét}}\xrightarrow{\alpha}(X/S)_t\xrightarrow{\beta}X_{\mathrm{Nis}}.\] Tameness of an étale covering should be thought of as ``at most tamely ramified along the boundary of compactifications over \(S\)''. This allows motivic techniques like sheaves with transfers à la Voevodsky and the \(\mathbb{A}^1\)-homotopy category of Morel-Voevodsky work essentially without change also for the tame site (of course, it has some technical disadvantages). One main result in this paper under review is a few appealing properties of the resulting tame cohomology groups \(H^n_t(X/S, F)\): topological invariance (universal homeomorphism yields isomorphic tame sites), comparison with étale cohomology (\(H^n_t(X/S, \alpha_*F)\cong H_{\mathrm{ét}}(X, F)\) for an étale sheaf \(F\) of abelian groups on \(X\), if either \(mF=0\) for some integer \(m\) invertible on \(S\), or \(X\to S\) is proper), and excision (for tame cohomology groups with supports). The tame cohomology groups \(H^n_t(X/S, F)\) satisfy a continuity property: they take cofiltered limits in \(X/S\) (of qcqs schemes with affine transition morphisms) and filtered colimits in \(F\) to colimits (Theorems 4.5 and 4.6). Assuming a version of resolution of singularities, they aslo prove homotopy invariance and purity of tame cohomology for (locally constant) torsion sheaves (in pure characteristic). These are accomplished by a comparison between the tame cohomology and the cohomology of the associated adic space \(\mathrm{Spa}(X, S)\) (Theorem 14.8), relating them to Čech cohomologies. In the adic case this is rather involved and requires a careful analysis of relative Riemann-Zariski spaces as introduced by \textit{M. Temkin} [Isr. J. Math. 185, 1--42 (2011; Zbl 1273.14007)]. As a final application, they construct, for a scheme \(X\) of finite type over an algebraically closed field \(k\) admitting resolution of singularities, natural maps \[\beta_n: H^n_t(X/k, \mathbb{Z}/m)\to H^n_S(X, \mathbb{Z}/m)\] (RHS being Suslin cohomology), which conjecture to be isomorphisms, extending work of \textit{A. Suslin} and \textit{V. Voevodsky} [Invent. Math. 123, No. 1, 61--94 (1996; Zbl 0896.55002)] and of \textit{T. Geisser} and \textit{A. Schmidt} [Doc. Math. 21, 91--123 (2016; Zbl 1354.14033)].