Realizing Artin-Schreier Covers with Minimal a-numbers in Positive Characteristic

DOI10.2140/INVOLVE.2022.15.559MaRDI QIDQ6337070arXivFDO

Authors Fiona Abney-McPeek, Hugo Berg, Jeremy Booher, Sun Mee Choi, Viktor Fukala, Miroslav Marinov, Theo Müller, Paweł Narkiewicz, Rachel Pries, Nancy Xu, Andrew Yuan

Publication date 19 March 2020

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Polynomials over finite fields (11T06) Formal methods and deformations in algebraic geometry (14D15) Jacobians, Prym varieties (14H40) Curves over finite and local fields (11G20) Positive characteristic ground fields in algebraic geometry (14G17) Coverings of curves, fundamental group (14H30)

Abstract: Suppose $X$ is a smooth projective connected curve defined over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p>0$ and $BsubsetX$ is a finite, possibly empty, set of points. Booher and Cais determined a lower bound for the $a$-number of a $mathbfZ/pmathbfZ$-cover of $X$ with branch locus $B$. For odd primes $p$, in most cases it is not known if this lower bound is realized. In this note, when $X$ is ordinary, we use formal patching to reduce that question to a computational question about $a$-numbers of $mathbfZ/pmathbfZ$-covers of the affine line. As an application, when $p=3$ or $p=5$, for any ordinary curve $X$ and any choice of $B$, we prove that the lower bound is realized for Artin-Schreier covers of $X$ with branch locus $B$.

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