Simple connectivity of Fargues–Fontaine curves

Abstract

We show that the Fargues--Fontaine curve associated to an algebraically closed field of characteristic p is geometrically simply connected; that is, its base extension from Q_p to any complete algebraically closed overfield admits no nontrivial connected finite etale covering. We then deduce from this an analogue for perfectoid spaces (and some related objects) of Drinfeld's lemma on the fundamental group of a product of schemes in characteristic p.