Some remarks on the local fundamental group scheme (Q943026)

Let \(X\) be a smooth projective variety over an algebraically closed field \(k\) of characteristic \(p\). Fix a \(k\)-point \(x\) of \(X\). The local fundamental group scheme \(\pi^{\text{loc}}\) of \(X\) with base point at \(x\) is Tannaka dual to the category \(FT(X)\) of all vector bundles, which becomes trivial when pulled back by some power of the Frobenius mapping of \(X\). It is known that \(\pi^{\text{loc}}\) does not respect base-change with respect to field extensions \(k\subset K\). The work under review gives an interesting criterion for \(\pi^{\text{loc}}\) to respect base-change. Let \(S(X,r,t)\) denote the set of isomorphism classes of simple objects of \(FT(X)\) of fixed rank \(r\) and become trivial when pulled back by the \(t\)-th power of the Frobenius mapping. It is shown that \(S(X,r,t)\) is the set of closed points of a scheme \(M(X,r,t)\) defined over \(k\). The main result claims that \(\pi^{\text{loc}}\) has base-change iff \(S(X,r,t)\) is a finite set for any \(r,t\).