Grothendieck's theorem on non-abelian H^2 and local-global principles
Abstract
A theorem of Grothendieck asserts that over a perfect field k of cohomological dimension one, all non-abelian H^2-cohomology sets of algebraic groups are trivial. The purpose of this paper is to establish a formally real generalization of this theorem. The generalization -- to the context of perfect fields of virtual cohomological dimension one -- takes the form of a local-global principle for the H^2-sets with respect to the orderings of the field. This principle asserts in particular that an element in H^2 is neutral precisely when it is neutral in the real closure with respect to every ordering in a dense subset of the real spectrum of k. Our techniques provide a new proof of Grothendieck's original theorem. An application to homogeneous spaces over k is also given.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.math/9803113,
title = {Grothendieck's theorem on non-abelian H^2 and local-global principles},
author = {Yuval Z. Flicker and Claus Scheiderer and R. Sujatha},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/9803113},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
22 pages, AMS-TeX; accepted for publication by the Journal of the AMS