Almost purity and overconvergent Witt vectors (Q471892)

The paper under review is devoted to the definition and study of overconvergent Witt vectors in a quite general setting: it works for rings of characteristic \(p\) but also rings equipped with a \(p\)-adic norm, with no completeness assumption. The authors believe that this ring is a candidate for a global theory of \((\varphi,\Gamma)\)-modules. The main theorem asserts that the construction of overconvergent Witt vectors is, in some sense, compatible with finite étale extensions. It is applied at the end of the paper to construct a kind of \((\varphi,\Gamma)\)-module associated to an Artin motive. The whole paper makes a heavy use of the results of [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 142, No. 7, 2211--2226 (2014; Zbl 1291.13038)] by the same authors. Let \(A\) be a commutative and unital ring and \(p\) be a prime number. Section 1 is devoted to the ring of \(p\)-typical Witt vectors \(W(A)\). It is endowed with a Frobenius map \(F\) that is the only map that corresponds to \[ (w_{1},w_{p},\dots) \mapsto (w_{p},w_{p^2},\dots) \] at the level of ghost components. The ring \(A\) is said to be Witt-perfect at \(p\) if the map \(F : W_{p^{n+1}}(A) \to W_{p^n}(A)\) is surjective for every \(n\). This is reminiscent of the perfectoid condition from [\textit{P. Scholze}, Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 116, 245--313 (2012; Zbl 1263.14022)]. For the main result of section 2, the ring \(A\) is assumed to Witt-perfect at \(p\) and \(p\)-normal, {i.e.} \(p\)-torsion-free and integrally closed in \(A_{p} := A[p^{-1}]\). The authors recall the ``almost purity'' result from [Zbl 1291.13038] (see also [\textit{G. Faltings}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 1, No. 1, 255--299 (1988; Zbl 0764.14012)], [\textit{K. S. Kedlaya} and \textit{R. Liu}, ``Relative \(p\)-adic Hodge theory. I: Foundations'', \url{arXiv:1301.0792}], [Scholze, loc. cit.]): the integral closure of \(A\) in a finite étale extension of \(A_{p}\) is Witt-perfect at \(p\) and derive some consequences of it. In section 3, the authors define the ring \(W_{\leftarrow}(R)\) as the inverse limit of the \(W_{p^n}(R)\), where the transition maps are given by \(F\) (instead of the restriction as for the usual ring of Witt vectors). There are associated \((p^{-n})\)-ghosts component maps for every \(n\geq 0\) defined as the composition of \(W_{\leftarrow}(R) \to W_{p^n}(R)\) with the first Witt component map of \(W_{p^n}(R)\). Elements of \(W_{\leftarrow}(R)\) may be identified family of those components \((w_{p^{-n}})_{n\geq 0}\). There is also an inverse Frobenius map \(F^{-1}\). When \(R\) is of characteristic \(p\) or when \(R\) is \(p\)-adically complete, \(W_{\leftarrow}(R)\) is isomorphic to \(W(R')\) for some explicit \(R'\). In the latter case, one recovers the usual \(\theta\) map of \(p\)-adic Hodge theory via this isomorphism. Sections 5 and 6 deal with norms on rings and Witt vectors. Given a nonarchimedean submultiplicative seminorm \(|\cdot|\) on a ring \(R\), the authors define one on \(W_{p^r}(R)\) by \[ |(x_{p^n})_{0\leq n\leq r}|_{W} = \max\{|x_{p^n}|^{1/p^n}, 0\leq n\leq r\}. \] In section 6 comes the definition of the ring of overconvergent Witt vectors \(W_{\leftarrow}^\dag(R)\): it is formed by the elements \((\underline{x}_{p^{-n}})_{n\geq 0}\) in \(W_{\leftarrow}(R)\) for which there exists a \(b>0\) such that \(p^{-bn} |\underline{x}_{p^{-n}}|_{W}^{p^n} \to 0\). When \(R\) is perfect of characteristic \(p\) with a power-multiplicative seminorm, one recovers the usual overconvergent Witt ring of [\textit{C. Davis} et al., J. Reine Angew. Math. 668, 1--34 (2012; Zbl 1261.13013)] and [\textit{C. Davis} et al., Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 44, No. 2, 197--262 (2011; Zbl 1236.14025)]. In section 7 comes the main theorem of the paper. Let \(A\) be a ring that is \(p\)-normal and Witt-perfect at \(p\). If \(S\) is a finite étale algebra over \(R := A_{p}\), then \(W_{\leftarrow}^\dag(S)\) is finite étale over \(W_{\leftarrow}^\dag(R)\). In section 8, an application of the theorem is given. Starting with an Artin motive over \(\mathbb{Q}\) with coefficients in a field \(K\), {i.e.} a finite dimensional \(K\)-vector space equipped with a discrete action of \(G_{\mathbb{Q}}\), the authors define a \((\varphi^{-1},\Gamma)\)-module over the ring \(W_{\leftarrow}^\dag(\mathbb{Q}^{ab}) \otimes_{\mathbb{Z}} K\) (where \(\mathbb{Q}^{ab}\) is equipped with the supremum norm taken over all place over \(p\)). They prove that the corresponding functor is faithful but not fully faithful.