Monodromy and rigidity of crystalline local systems
Abstract
We study several rigidity properties of -adic local systems on a smooth rigid analytic space over a -adic field. We prove that the monodromy of the log isocrystal attached to a -adic local system is ''rigid'' along irreducible components of the special fiber. Then we give several applications. First, suppose that has good reduction. We show that if a family of semistable representations is crystalline at one classical point on , then it is crystalline everywhere. Second, combining with the -adic monodromy theorem recently studied by the authors and their collaborators, we prove the following surprising rigidity result conjectured by Shankar: for any -adic local system on a smooth projective variety with good reduction, if it is potentially crystalline at one classical point, then it is potentially crystalline everywhere. Finally, we show that if a -adic local system on the complement of a reduced normal crossing divisor on a smooth rigid analytic space is crystalline at all classical points, then it extends uniquely to a -adic local system on the entire space. In other words, such a local system cannot have geometric monodromy if it has no arithmetic monodromy everywhere on the complement of a reduced normal crossing divisor.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.19813,
title = {Monodromy and rigidity of crystalline local systems},
author = {Hansheng Diao and Zijian Yao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.19813},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
68 pages, 4 figures