On the vanishing of Hochster's \(\theta\) invariant (Q503335)

In [Mosc. Math. J. 12, No. 2, 237--259 (2012; Zbl 1269.32016)] \textit{R.-O. Buchweitz} and \textit{D. van Straten} proved that the Hochster theta pairing associated to a complex isolated hypersurface singularity of even dimension vanishes. Their argument involves a reinterpretation of the Hochster theta pairing in terms of the topological \(K\)-theory of the link of the singularity. In the paper under review, the author aims to prove analogues of several results of Buchweitz-van Straten in positive characteristic. One of the main results (Corollary 7.16) implies the vanishing of the Hochster theta pairing associated to a large family of isolated hypersurface singularities of even dimension, settling a conjecture of H. Dao in a large number of cases. In Section 2, the author provides background on Buchweitz-van Straten's work and discusses a purely algebraic analogue of the Milnor fibration which exists in the positive characteristic setting. Section 3 contains a discussion of Sherman's ``star pairing'' in algebraic \(K\)-theory; this section contains a proof of (a weakened form of) a conjecture of Sherman which may be of independent interest. In Section 4, the results of section 3 are applied to give a reinterpretation of Hochster's theta pairing in terms of standard operations in algebraic \(K\)-theory. In Section 5, the aforementioned \(K\)-theoretic formula for Hochster's theta pairing is related to the ``specialization map'' in algebraic \(K\)-theory with finite coefficients. Section 6 gives some technical background on Bott-inverted algebraic \(K\)-theory with finite coefficients, and Section 7 contains the proof of the vanishing statement discussed above.