Moduli spaces of principal F-bundles

In this paper we construct certain moduli spaces, which we call moduli spaces of (principal) $F$-bundles, and study their basic properties. These spaces are associated to triples consisting of a smooth projective geometrically connected curve over a finite field, a split reductive group $G$, and an irreducible algebraic representation $\ov{\om}$ of $(\check{G})^n/Z(\check{G})$. Our spaces generalize moduli spaces of $F$-sheaves, studied by Drinfeld and Lafforgue, which correspond to the case $G=GL_r$ and $\ov{\om}$ is the tensor product of the standard representation and its dual. The importance of the moduli spaces of $F$-bundles is due to the belief that Langlands correspondence should be realized in their cohomology.