The de Rham-Witt and Z_p-cohomologies of an algebraic variety.pdf

a r X i v : m a t h / 0 5 0 1 3 8 0 v 1 [ m a t h .A G ] 2 2 J a n 2 0 0 5 The de Rham-Witt and Zp-cohomologies of an algebraic variety James S. Milne Niranjan Ramachandran ? February 1, 2008 To Mike Artin on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Abstract We prove that, for a smooth complete variety X over a perfect field, H i(X,Zp(r)) ～= HomDbc(R)(1 , RΓ(W? ? X)(r)[i]) where H i(X,Zp(r)) = lim←?n H i?r(Xet, νn(r)) (Milne 1986, p309), W? ? X is the de Rham-Witt complex on X (Illusie 1979b), and Dbc(R) is the triangulated category of coherent complexes over the Raynaud ring (Illusie and Raynaud 1983, I 3.10.1, p120). Introduction According to the standard philosophy (cf. Deligne 1994, 3.1), a cohomology theory X 7→ H i(X, r) on the algebraic varieties over a fixed field k should arise from a functor RΓ taking values in a triangulated category D equipped with a t-structure and a Tate twist D 7→ D(r) (a self-equivalence). The heart D? of D should be stable under the Tate twist and have a tensor structure; in particular, there should be an essentially unique identity object 1 in D? such that 1 ? D ～= D ～= D ? 1 for all objects in D?. The cohomology theory should satisfy H i(X, r) ～= HomD(1 , RΓ(X)(r)[i]). (1) For example, motivic cohomology H imot(X,Q(r)) should arise in this way from a functor to a category D whose heart is the category of mixed motives k. Absolute ?-adic e?tale cohomology H iet(X,Z?(r)), ? 6= char(k), arises in this way from a functor to a category D whose heart is the category of continuous representations of Gal(k?/k) on finitely generated Z?-modules (Ekedahl 1990). When k is algebraically closed, H i et(X,Z?(r)) becomes the familiar group lim ←? H iet(X,μ ?r ?n ) and lies in D ? ; moreover, in this case, (1) simplifies to H i(X, r) ～= H i(RΓ(X)(r)). (2) ? Partially supported by GRB (University of Maryland) and IHES. 1 2Now let k be a perfect field of characteristic p 6= 0, and let W be the ring of Witt vectors over k. For a smooth complete var