Around the Thom-Sebastiani theorem, with an appendix by Weizhe Zheng (Q506982)

The author generalizes the Thom-Sebastiani Theorem to the \(\ell\)-adic setting in this article. Let \(f: (\mathbb{C}^{m+1},0)\to (\mathbb{C},0)\) and \(g: (\mathbb{C}^{n+1},0)\to (\mathbb{C},0)\) be germs of holomorphic functions having \(0\) as an isolated critical point with value \(0\), the classical Thom-Sebastiani Theorem describes the vanishing cycles group of \(f\oplus\) at \(0\) as a tensor product: \[ \Phi^m(f)\otimes \Phi^n(g)\overset{\sim}{\rightarrow} \Phi^{m+n+1}(f\oplus g). \] In the \(\ell\)-adic setting (in positive characteristic), Deligne observed that the tensor product should be replaced by a certain convolution product, and the author uses Deligne's theory of nearby cycles over general bases to prove algebraic variants and generalizations. The main ingredient is a Künneth formula for nearby cycles. A short proof of this formula is given by Weizhe Zheng in the appendix. In the last section, the author studies the tame sheaves on \(\mathbb{A}^1\) in detail and the the relation between the tensor and convolution products in both global and local cases.