Diagonalizing the Frobenius (Q2475081)

Let \((R, m)\) be a local ring of prime characteristic \(p\) and let \(M,N\) be finitely generated modules with \(\operatorname{pd} (M) < \infty\) and \(\ell(M \otimes_R N) < \infty\). When \(\text{dim} (M) + \text{dim}(N) \leq \text{dim}(R)\), the Dutta multiplicity is given by \[ \chi_{\infty}(M,N)=\lim_{e \to \infty} \frac{1}{p^{e\, \text{codim}(M)}}\chi(F_R^e(M),N), \] where \(F_R\) is the Frobenius functor and \(\chi\) is the intersection multiplicity defined by Serre. This multiplicity satisfies the vanishing conjecture of Serre and is equal to the Serre's intersection multiplicity whenever this satisfies the vanishing conjecture. By studying Grothendieck spaces, the paper under review is centered around the connection between the vanishing conjecture and the Frobenius functor. Given a class of a bounded complex of finitely generated, projective modules in a Grothendieck space, the author shows how to decompose it into eigenvectors for the Frobenius. As a consequence, a formula for the Dutta multiplicity is obtained. The author also shows that a weaker version of the vanishing conjecture holds whenever \(\chi(F_R(X))=p^{\operatorname{dim}(R)} \chi(X)\) for all bounded complexes \(X\) of finitely generated, projective modules with finite length cohomology.