English

On the Lau group scheme

Algebraic Geometry 2025-11-18 v8

Abstract

In a 2013 article, Eike Lau constructed a canonical morphism from the stack of nn-truncated Barsotti-Tate groups over FpF_p to the stack of nn-truncated displays. He also proved that this morphism is a gerbe banded by a commutative group scheme. In this paper we describe the group scheme explicitly. The stack of nn-truncated Barsotti-Tate groups over FpF_p has a generalization related to any pair (G,μ)(G,\mu), where GG is a smooth group scheme over Z/pnZ/p^n and μ\mu is a 1-bounded cocharacter of GG. The same is true for the stack of nn-truncated displays. We conjecture that in this more general situation the first stack is a gerbe over the second one banded by a commutative group scheme, and we give a conjectural description of this group scheme. We also give a conjectural description of the stack of nn-truncated Barsotti-Tate groups over the formal spectrum of ZpZ_p and of its (G,μ)(G,\mu)-generalization.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.06194,
  title  = {On the Lau group scheme},
  author = {Vladimir Drinfeld},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.06194},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Minor changes (mostly in Appendix D)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:28:32.355Z