January 29, 2013

The Weil bound for curves over finite fields

Posted by Akhil Mathew under algebraic geometry, number theory | Tags: , , , |
Leave a Comment 

The purpose of this post is to describe an application of the general intersection theory machinery (for curves on surfaces) developed in the previous posts: the Weil bound on points on a curve over a finite field.

1. Statement of the Weil bound

Let {C} be a smooth, projective, geometrically irreducible curve over {\mathbb{F}_q} of genus g. Then the Weil bound states that:

\displaystyle |C(\mathbb{F}_q) - q - 1 | \leq 2 g \sqrt{q}.

Weil’s proof of this bound is based on intersection theory on the surface {C \times C}. More precisely, let

\displaystyle \overline{C} = C \times_{\mathbb{F}_q} \overline{\mathbb{F}_q},

so that {\overline{C}} is a smooth, connected, projective curve. It comes with a Frobenius map

\displaystyle F: \overline{C} \rightarrow \overline{C}

of {\overline{\mathbb{F}_q}}-varieties: in projective coordinates the Frobenius runs

\displaystyle [x_0: \dots : x_n] \mapsto [x_0^q: \dots : x_n^q].

In particular, the map has degree {q}. One has

\displaystyle C( \mathbb{F}_q) = \mathrm{Fix}(F, \overline{C}(\overline{\mathbb{F}}_q))

representing the {\mathbb{F}_q}-valued points of {C} as the fixed points of the Frobenius (Galois) action on the {\overline{\mathbb{F}_q}}-valued points. So the strategy is to count fixed points, using intersection theory.

Using the (later) theory of {l}-adic cohomology, one represents the number of fixed points of the Frobenius as the Lefschetz number of {F}: the action of {F} on {H^0} and {H^2} give the terms {q+1}. The fact that (remaining) action of {F} on the {2g}-dimensional vector space {H^1} can be bounded is one of the Weil conjectures, proved by Deligne for general varieties: here it states that {F} has eigenvalues which are algebraic integers all of whose conjugates have absolute value {\sqrt{q}}. (more…)

 

August 19, 2011

l-adic cohomology and exponential sums

Posted by Akhil Mathew under algebraic geometry, number theory | Tags: , , , , , |
[2] Comments 

I’d like to explain what I think is a pretty piece of mathematics.

Deligne’s proof of the Weil conjectures, and his strengthenings of them, in his epic paper “La conjecture de Weil II” have had, needless to say, many applications—far more than the initial paper where he proved the last of the Weil conjectures. One of the applications is to bounding exponential sums. I’d like to begin sketching the idea today. I learned this from the article “Sommes trigonometriques” in SGA 4.5, which is very fun to read.

1. The trace formula

Let’s say you have some variety {X_0} over a finite field {\kappa}, say separated. Suppose you have a {l}-adic sheaf {\mathcal{F}_0} on {X_0}. I’ll denote by “dropping the zero” the base change to {\overline{\kappa}}, so {\mathcal{F}} denotes the pull-back to {X = X_0 \times_{\kappa} \overline{\kappa}}.

For each point {x \in X_0}, we can take the “geometric stalk” {\mathcal{F}_{\overline{x}}} (or {\mathcal{F}_{0 \overline{x}}}) which is given by finding a map {\mathrm{Spec} \overline{\kappa} \rightarrow X_0} hitting {x}, and pulling {\mathcal{F}_0} back to it. This “stalk” is automatically equivariant with respect to the Galois group {\mathrm{Gal}(\overline{\kappa}/k(x))} for {k(x)} the residue field, and as a result we can compute the trace of the geometric Frobenius {F_x} of {k(x) \hookrightarrow \overline{\kappa}}—that’s the inverse of the usual Frobenius—and take its trace on {\mathcal{F}_{\overline{x}}}.

So the intuition here is that we’re taking local data of the sheaf {\mathcal{F}_0}: just the trace of its Frobenius at each point. One interesting interpretation of this procedure was discussed on this MO question: namely, the process is analogous to “integration over a contour.” Here the contour is {\mathrm{Spec} k(x)}, which has cohomological dimension one and is thus the étale version of a curve.

Now, the trace formula says that the local data of these traces all pieces into a simple piece of global data, which is the compactly supported cohomology. (more…)