Tempered fundamental group and metric graph of a Mumford curve (Q616616)

For \(p\)-adic analytic varieties, no obvious notion of fundamental group exists. In [Period mappings and differential equations. MSJ Memoirs. 12. Tokyo: Mathematical Society of Japan. (2003; Zbl 1029.14006)] and [Duke Math. J. 119, No. 1, 1--39 (2003; Zbl 1155.11356)], \textit{Y. André} defined a notion of ``tempered fundamental group'' that combines the étale fundamental group (in the sense of [\textit{A. J. de Jong}, Compos. Math. 97, No. 1-2, 89--118 (1995; Zbl 0864.14012)]) with the topological fundamental group of the associated Berkovich space (see [\textit{V. G. Berkovich}, Spectral theory and analytic geometry over non-archimedean fields. Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, 33. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS). (1990; Zbl 0715.14013)]) and appears to be well-behaved. The first sections of the paper under review give new evidence to second this opinion and prove some results analogous to the classical ones (birational invariance, description in the case of abelian varieties, etc.). In the last section, the case of Mumford curves is investigated and Lepage proves the striking result that, for such a curve, one may recover the graph of its stable reduction, together with its metric, from the knowledge of its tempered fundamental group. Let us now give some more details. From now on, we fix a complete nonarchimedean field \(K\) with nontrivial valuation. In the first section, Lepage recalls André's definition of the tempered fundamental group and proves that it is a birational invariant. He also gives an overview of \textit{S. Mochizuki}'s work on the subject (see [Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 42, No. 1, 221--322 (2006; Zbl 1113.14025)]) and states in particular the following result: if \(K\) is a discretely valued field of mixed characteristic \((0,p)\), the graph of the stable reduction of a hyperbolic curve can be recovered from its pro-\((p')\) tempered fundamental group. Section 2 is devoted to abelian varieties. Assume that \(K\) is algebraically closed of characteristic 0 and let \(A\) be an abelian variety of dimension \(g\). By \(p\)-adic uniformization, there exists a semi-abelian variety \(G\) and an analytic morphism \(G^{\text{an}} \to A^{\text{an}}\) between the analytifications that is a universal topological cover. Then the tempered fundamental group of \(A^{\text{an}}\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{Z}^d \times \hat{\mathbb{Z}}^{2g-d}\), where \(d\) the dimension of the toric part of \(G\). Next, Lepage considers the case of a curve \(C\) over \(K\) when \(K\) is a discrete valuation field of characteristic 0 and proves that the abelianization of the tempered fundamental group of \(C_{\hat{\bar{K}}}\) is isomorphic to the tempered fundamental group of its Jacobian variety. In section 3, Lepage shows the invariance of the tempered fundamental group under change of algebraically closed fields for smooth spaces in characteristic 0. This is technically more demanding and he has to make use to \textit{V. G. Berkovich}'s precise description of the homotopy type of smooth spaces (see [Invent. Math. 137, No. 1, 1--84 (1999; Zbl 0930.32016)], whose results are recalled in \S 3.1). Using the same techniques, he proves that the tempered fundamental group of a product of smooth spaces is the product of the tempered fundamental groups of the factors. In section 4, Lepage deals with hyperbolic curves over a discrete valuation field \(K\) of mixed characteristic \((0,p)\). From Mochizuki's result, we know that the tempered fundamental group determines the graph of the stable reduction. Lepage begins by recalling how this graph may be endowed with a metric and proves that, in some cases, this metric too can actually be recovered from the tempered fundamental group. The main ingredient is a fine study of the ramification of covers of the form \(z \in \mathbb{G}_{m} \to z^{p^h} \in \mathbb{G}_{m}\). For such a cover, the number of preimages over the point associated to the ball \(B(1,r)\) depends on \(r\) in an explicit way. Hence, if one can extract information about the ramification from the tempered fundamental group, it should also be possible to get information about the metric. The first case which is studied is that of \(\mathbb{P}^1\) minus \(n\geq 4\) points in \(\mathbb{Q}_{p}^{\text{nr}}\) and the second is that of a Tate elliptic curve minus one point (in this case, it means that if \(\mathbb{C}_{p}^*/q_{1}^\mathbb{Z} - \{1\}\) and \(\mathbb{C}_{p}^*/q_{1}^\mathbb{Z} - \{1\}\) have isomorphic tempered fundamental groups, then \(|q_{1}|=|q_{2}|\)). Finally, Lepage proves that the metric graph of the stable reduction can be recovered from the tempered fundamental group for Mumford curves. This is achieved by studying the structure of \(\mathbb{Z}/p^h\mathbb{Z}\)-torsors through the theory of theta functions (see \textit{M. van der Put}, Groupe Etude Anal. Ultramétrique, 9e Année: 1981/82, No. 1, Exposé No. 10, 12 p. (1983; Zbl 0515.14027)]). Actually Lepage's strategy only enables him to determine the length of the loops, but a combinatorial lemma then gives the conclusion.