Relative Artin motives and the reductive Borel-Serre compactification of a locally symmetric variety (Q421023)

If \(X\) is a noetherian scheme, then one can associate to it a triangulated category \(DA(X)\) of motives over \(X\). Any quasi-projective \(X\)-scheme \(Y\) has a cohomological motive, an object of \(DA(X)\). A general cohomological motive is an object which can be obtained from cohomological ones by taking direct sums, shifts and cones. For example, if \(X\) is of finite type over a perfect field \(k\), then the category of general cohomological motives is the smallest triangulated subcategory of \(DA(X)\) stable under infinite sums and containing cohomological motives of \(X\)-schemes \(Y\) which are projective over \(X\) and smooth over \(k\). Similarly, one can define Artin motives by starting with cohomological motives of schemes \(Y\) finite over \(X\). The authors show that, given a cohomological motive \(M\), a universal Artin motive \(\omega_X^0(M)\) exists and satisfies nice properties. The functors \(\omega_X^0\) can be used to define a motive \(\mathbb{E}_X\) over \(X\), which turns out to be an invariant of the singularities of \(X\). This motive can be computed in terms of a stratification of \(X\) by smooth locally closed subsets and a compatible family of resolutions of the closure of each stratum. The above is then applied to locally symmetric varieties. Namely, let \(\Gamma\setminus D\) be a locally symmetric variety, that is, \(D\) is a bounded symmetric domain and \(\Gamma\subset \text{Aut}(D)\) is an arithmetically-defined subgroup. Then \(\Gamma\setminus D\) has a canonical structure of an algebraic variety. Its Baily--Borel--Satake compactification \(\overline{\Gamma\setminus D}^{bb}\) is a projective variety, while the rather prominent reductive Borel--Serre compactification \(\overline{\Gamma\setminus D}^{rbs}\) is only a real stratified space. The main theorem of the article concerns the latter space. Namely, the Betti realization of \(\mathbb{E}_{\overline{X}^{bb}}\) is canonically isomorphic to \(Rp_*\mathbb{Q}_{\overline{\Gamma\setminus D}^{rbs}}\), where \(p: \overline{\Gamma\setminus D}^{rbs}\rightarrow \overline{\Gamma\setminus D}^{bb}\) is the natural stratified projection and \(\overline{\Gamma\setminus D}^{bb}\) is, roughly speaking, the variety of \(\mathbb{C}\)-points of a projective scheme \(\overline{X}^{bb}\). The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 deals with triangulated categories of motives, while Section 3 studies the functors \(\omega_X^0\) and the motive \(\mathbb{E}_X\). Section 4 is an exposition of known material concerning compactifications of locally symmetric varieties. Finally, in Section 5 the authors prove the main result.