## Rank one elliptic $$A$$-modules and $$A$$-harmonic series.(English)Zbl 0807.11032

This paper is a tour de force on the part of the author. It represents a high point of a trend started by Drinfeld: Apply ideas from the theory of partial differential equations to the arithmetic of function fields over finite fields; in particular, basic to the author’s work is the concept of a “soliton” – an idea from the theory of water waves and the famous nonlinear Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV): ${{\partial\varphi} \over {\partial t}} = {{\partial^ 3\varphi} \over {\partial x^ 3}} +6\varphi{{\partial\varphi} \over {\partial x}}.$ (A “soliton” is – roughly – a periodic or quasi-periodic solution to KdV.)
Let $$X/\mathbb{F}_ q$$ be a smooth, projective, geometrically irreducible curve and let $$\infty\in X$$ be a rational point; one then sets $$A$$ to be the affine ring of $$X-\infty$$ and $$k$$ to be the quotient field of $$A$$. By fiat the field $$k$$ contains exactly one place not in $$\text{Spec} (A)$$ thus mimicking the classical case of $$\mathbb{Z}\subset \mathbb{Q}$$. The field $$k$$ forms a “bottom” for the theory, exactly as $$\mathbb{Q}$$ is a bottom in algebraic number theory. In this situation we can define characteristic $$p$$ analogs of classical $$L$$-functions and $$\Gamma$$-functions [see the reviewer in ‘The arithmetic of function fields’, de Gruyter, 313-402 (1992)]. In order to make these definitions “good” analytic functions (in a straightforward sense) one always “groups according to degree”. For instance, an $$L$$-series $$\sum c_ a a^{-s}$$ is analytically continued by grouping the terms of the same degree; $\sum c_ a a^{- s}= \sum_ j \Bigl( \sum_{\deg a=j} c_ a a^{-s} \Bigr),$ etc. Thus each such function $$f$$ is made up of a sequence $$f_ k$$ of “degree parts”.
The author seeks to study such $$f$$ via an “interpolation formula”: One seeks an algebraic function $$\varphi$$ of two variables $$\{x,t\}$$ such that $$f_ k$$ (or, perhaps, $$f_{k+1}/ f_ k$$ or $$f_{k+2} f_ k/ f^ 2_{k+1}$$) is recovered by specializing $$x$$ and $$t$$ (for instance, if $$A= \mathbb{F}_ q [T]$$ then $$x=T$$ and $$t= T^{q^ k}$$). The point being that such a $$\varphi$$ is found by using soliton methods in characteristic $$p$$ obtained by essentially replacing differentiation with the $$q$$-th power mapping, an idea that may seem far-fetched from afar but becomes more and more natural the closer it is examined. For instance, set $$\delta y:= y^ q- y$$. One then finds trivially that $$\delta$$ satisfies the derivation-identity: $\delta (xy)= x\delta y+ y^ q\delta x.$ In the case $$A= \mathbb{F}_ q[T]$$ an ad-hoc version of this procedure was used to find $$\varphi$$ [see G. W. Anderson in ‘The arithmetic of function fields’, 51-73 (1992; Zbl 0797.11056)].
The main tool in the author’s derivation of $$\varphi$$ is his Theorem 4.1.1: one maps $$Y\times Y$$ to $$J$$ and looks at the locus $$Z$$ of the pullback of the theta-divisor. One expresses $$Z$$ as a sum over certain correspondences coming from graphs of (composites) of the Frobenius and elements of $$\operatorname{Aut}(Y/X)$$ – so one is interested in the multiplicities that appear. The author establishes the deep fact that these multiplicities may be read off of an $$L$$-function evaluator (i.e., a formal power series with coefficients in $$\mathbb{Z}[ \operatorname{Aut} (Y/X)]$$ used to define classical – characteristic 0 – $$L$$-series). The main result of the author is then established: A version for general sign-normalized rank one Drinfeld $$A$$-modules of the basic classical identity: $$\exp(- \sum_{n=1}^ \infty {{z^ n} \over n})= 1-z$$. This result was inspired by some remarkable class number one calculations of D. Thakur [Int. Math. Res. Not. 1992, No. 9, 185-197 (1992; Zbl 0756.11015)]. Motivated by the present paper, in a recent preprint the author is able to construct regulators for zeta-functions (in the above sense).

### MSC:

 11G09 Drinfel’d modules; higher-dimensional motives, etc. 35Q51 Soliton equations 35Q53 KdV equations (Korteweg-de Vries equations)

### Citations:

Zbl 0797.11056; Zbl 0756.11015
Full Text:

### References:

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