Algebraic versus topological entropy for surfaces over finite fields (Q379130)

For a smooth projective surface \(X\) over the field \({\mathbb C}\) of complex numbers and an automorphism \(\varphi: X\to X\), the topological entropy of \(\varphi\) is defined as follows: \(\varphi\) acts linearly on \(H^2(X({\mathbb C}))\) via contravariance and acts as identity on \(H^0(X({\mathbb C}))\oplus H^4(X({\mathbb C}))\). Then we know that the maximum absolute value of the eigenvalues of the action of \(\varphi\) on \(H^{2\bullet}(X({\mathbb C})) = H^{0}(X({\mathbb C}))\oplus H^{2}(X({\mathbb C})) \oplus H^{4}(X({\mathbb C}))\) is \(\geq 1\) and we define the entropy \(h(\varphi)\) to be the natural logarithm of those absolute values. In the paper under review, the authors consider a counterpart of entropy in positive characteristic by replacing de Rham cohomologies by \(\ell\)-adic étale cohomologies. The authors show the following. Let \(X\) be a smooth projective surface over a finite field \({\mathbb F}_q\) and \(\Theta\) a polarization. Let \(\varphi\in \text{Aut}(X)\) be an automorphism of the underlying surface. Let \(\bar{X} = X\otimes_{{\mathbb F}_q}\bar{{\mathbb F}}_p\) be the corresponding surface over an algebraic closure \(\bar{{\mathbb F}}_p\) of \({\mathbb F}_q\). Let \(\ell\neq{p}\) be a prime and let \[ V = V(X, [\Theta], \varphi) \subset [\Theta]^{\bot} \subset H^2_{\text{ét}}(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell(1)) \] be the largest \(\varphi\)-stable subspace, which is contained in the orthogonal complement of \([\Theta]\in H^2_{\text{ét}}(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell(1))\) with respect to the cup product pairing \[ H^2_{\text{ét}}(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell(1)) \otimes_{{\mathbb Q}_\ell} H^2_{\text{ét}}(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell(1)) \longrightarrow H^4_{\text{ét}}(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell(1))\cong {\mathbb Q}_\ell. \] Then, \(\varphi\) has finite order on \(V\) (Theorem~1.1). Moreover, the maximum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of \(\varphi\) on \(\bigoplus_{i=0}^4H_{\text{ét}}^i(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell)\) is achieved on the \({\mathbb Q}_\ell\)-span of \(\langle \varphi^n[\Theta], n\in{\mathbb Z}\rangle\) in \(H_{\text{ét}}^2(\bar{X}, {\mathbb Q}_\ell)\).