On the Structure of Affine Flat Group Schemes Over Discrete Valuation Rings, II

In the first part of this work [ 12], we studied affine group schemes over a discrete valuation ring (DVR) by means of Neron blowups. We also showed how to apply these findings to throw light on the group schemes coming from Tannakian categories of $\mathcal{D}$-modules. In the present work, we follow up this theme. We show that a certain class of affine group schemes of “infinite type,” Neron blowups of formal subgroups, are quite typical. We also explain how these group schemes appear naturally in Tannakian categories of $\mathcal{D}$-modules. To conclude, we isolate a Tannakian property of affine group schemes, named prudence, which allows one to verify if the underlying ring of functions is a free module over the base ring. This is then successfully applied to obtain a general result on the structure of differential Galois groups over complete DVRs.

Which abelian tensor categories are geometric?

For a large class of geometric objects, the passage to categories of quasi-coherent sheaves provides an embedding in the 2-category of abelian tensor categories. The notion of weakly Tannakian categories introduced by the author gives a characterization of tensor categories in the image of this embedding.However, this notion requires additional structure to be present, namely a fiber functor. For the case of classical Tannakian categories in characteristic zero, Deligne has found intrinsic properties—expressible entirely within the language of tensor categories—which are necessary and sufficient for the existence of a fiber functor. In this paper we generalize Deligne’s result to weakly Tannakian categories in characteristic zero. The class of geometric objects whose tensor categories of quasi-coherent sheaves can be recognized in this manner includes both the gerbes arising in classical Tannaka duality and more classical geometric objects such as projective varieties over a field of characteristic zero.Our proof uses a different perspective on fiber functors, which we formalize through the notion of geometric tensor categories. A second application of this perspective allows us to describe categories of quasi-coherent sheaves on fiber products.

Tannakian Categories With Semigroup Actions

A theorem of Ostrowski implies that log(x), log(x +1), … are algebraically independent over ℂ(x). More generally, for a linear differential or difference equation, it is an important problem to find all algebraic dependencies among a non-zero solution y and particular transformations of y, such as derivatives of y with respect to parameters, shifts of the arguments, rescaling, etc. In this paper, we develop a theory of Tannakian categories with semigroup actions, which will be used to attack such questions in full generality, as each linear differential equation gives rise to a Tannakian category. Deligne studied actions of braid groups on categories and obtained a ûnite collection of axioms that characterizes such actions to apply them to various geometric constructions. In this paper, we find a finite set of axioms that characterizes actions of semigroups that are ûnite free products of semigroups of the form on Tannakian categories. This is the class of semigroups that appear in many applications.

Ind-abelian categories and quasi-coherent sheaves

We study the question of when a category of ind-objects is abelian. Our answer allows a further generalization of the notion of weakly Tannakian categories introduced by the author. As an application we show that, under suitable conditions, the category of coherent sheaves on the product of two schemes with the resolution property is given by the Deligne tensor product of the categories of coherent sheaves of the two factors. To do this we prove that the class of quasi-compact and semi-separated schemes with the resolution property is closed under fiber products.

Graded and filtered fiber functors on Tannakian categories

We study fiber functors on Tannakian categories which are equipped with a grading or a filtration. Our goal is to give a comprehensive set of foundational results about such functors. A main result is that each filtration on a fiber functor can be split by a grading fpqc-locally on the base scheme.