The characteristic class and ramification of an \(\ell\)-adic étale sheaf (Q884980)

The main objective of the article under review lies in the definition of a natural characteristic class associated to an \(\ell \)-adic étale sheaf on a separated scheme of finite type over a field \(k \) with \(\ell \) a prime invertible in \(k \). The requirements on such a class -- besides certain naturality and compatibility properties -- are that it should reproduce the Euler-Poincaré charactersitic of the sheaf by some trace map and encode the ramification properties of the sheaf in an appropriate sense. Let \(\Lambda \) be a finite commutative \(\mathbb{Z}_\ell \)-algebra. The authors associate a class \(C({\mathcal F}) \in H^0(X, {\mathcal K}_X) \) to any object in the derived category of complexes of \(\Lambda \)-modules with finite tor-dimension on the étale site of \(X \) with constructible cohomology. Here, \({\mathcal K}_X \) is the dualizing complex on \(X \). The construction relies on a cohomological pairing due to Verdier for cohomological correspondences applied to the diagonal morphism. The relation to the Euler-Poincaré characteristic is a consequence of the Lefschetz-Verdier trace formula. As for the calculation of the class \(C({\mathcal F}) \), the authors prove several compatibility properties. Consequently, the principal case to be understood is the computation of \(C(j_! {\mathcal F}) \) for a smooth sheaf \({\mathcal F} \) on an open dense smooth subscheme \(j:U \to X \). This class is related to other exisiting ramification invariants as follows. If \(E \) denotes a finite extension of \(\mathbb{Q}_\ell \), the construction induces a characteristic class \(C({\mathcal F}) \) for any constructible \(E \)-sheaf on \(X \). The notion of a smooth sheaf \({\mathcal F} \) on \(U \) to be potentially of Kummer type with respect to \(X \) is introduced and it is proven that the difference \(C(j_! {\mathcal F}) - rank {\mathcal F} \cdot C(j_! E) \) equals the naive Swan class \(Sw^{naive}({\mathcal F}) \in CH_0(X \smallsetminus U)_E \) as defined in [\textit{K. Kato} and \textit{T. Saito}, Ann. Math. (2) 168, No. 1, 33--96 (2008; Zbl 1172.14011)] for these sheaves. Here, \(k \) is assumed to be perfect. This result also reproduces the generalized Grothendieck-Ogg-Shafarevich formula of loc. cit. If \(\Lambda \) is a local \(\mathbb{Z}_\ell \) algebra, \(X \) smooth and \(U \) the complement of a divisor \(D \) with simple normal crossings, if additionally \({\mathcal F} \) is of rank one and is clean with respect to \(D \), it is proven that the difference \(C(j_! {\mathcal F}) - C(j_! \Lambda) \) to be read in \(H^{2d}(X, \Lambda(d)) \) equals the \(0 \)-cycle class \(c_{{\mathcal F}} \) defined by \textit{K. Kato} [Am. J. Math. 116, No. 4, 757--784 (1994; Zbl 0864.11057)]. In the proof, the authors introduce a new method to resolve the ramification of the sheaf by log blow-ups instead of using ramified coverings. In a final chapter, a localized class \(C_S^0({\mathcal F}) \) being a refinement of the characteristic class is constructed for \(S \subset X \) a closed subscheme with dense complement \(U \) and such that the object \({\mathcal F} \) in the derived category has smooth cohomology sheaves on \(U \).