English

Formal smoothness of the Artin-Mazur formal groups

Algebraic Geometry 2025-10-06 v1

Abstract

Let XX be a smooth proper variety over an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic pp. We find cohomological conditions for the Artin-Mazur formal group functors Φi(X,Gm)\Phi^{i}(X,\mathbb{G}_m) to be formally smooth. We show that if all crystalline cohomology groups of XX are torsion-free (e.g. if XX is an abelian variety) then all of the Φi(X,Gm)\Phi^{i}(X,\mathbb{G}_m) are representable and formally smooth. We then identify a necessary condition for formal smoothness, which we use to give examples, for any d2d\ge2, of varieties XX for which Φi(X,Gm)\Phi^{i}(X,\mathbb{G}_m) is formally smooth when i<di<d, whereas Φd(X,Gm)\Phi^{d}(X,\mathbb{G}_m) is not. The constructions are inspired by Igusa's surface with non-smooth Picard scheme. Finally, we give a condition equivalent to formal smoothness in terms of Serre's Witt vector cohomology. The strategy relies on the notion of CC-smoothness - where CC is the group algebra of Qp/Zp\mathbb{Q}_p/\mathbb{Z}_p - which is a condition that detects when a formal group is formally smooth, and on the use of the Nygaard filtration to relate fppf cohomology to crystalline cohomology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.03001,
  title  = {Formal smoothness of the Artin-Mazur formal groups},
  author = {Livia Grammatica},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.03001},
  year   = {2025}
}