IWASAWA THEORY FOR p-TORSION CLASS GROUP SCHEMES IN CHARACTERISTIC p

Abstract We investigate a novel geometric Iwasawa theory for ${\mathbf Z}_p$ -extensions of function fields over a perfect field k of characteristic $p>0$ by replacing the usual study of p-torsion in class groups with the study of p-torsion class group schemes. That is, if $\cdots \to X_2 \to X_1 \to X_0$ is the tower of curves over k associated with a ${\mathbf Z}_p$ -extension of function fields totally ramified over a finite nonempty set of places, we investigate the growth of the p-torsion group scheme in the Jacobian of $X_n$ as $n\rightarrow \infty $ . By Dieudonné theory, this amounts to studying the first de Rham cohomology groups of $X_n$ equipped with natural actions of Frobenius and of the Cartier operator V. We formulate and test a number of conjectures which predict striking regularity in the $k[V]$ -module structure of the space $M_n:=H^0(X_n, \Omega ^1_{X_n/k})$ of global regular differential forms as $n\rightarrow \infty .$ For example, for each tower in a basic class of ${\mathbf Z}_p$ -towers, we conjecture that the dimension of the kernel of $V^r$ on $M_n$ is given by $a_r p^{2n} + \lambda _r n + c_r(n)$ for all n sufficiently large, where $a_r, \lambda _r$ are rational constants and $c_r : {\mathbf Z}/m_r {\mathbf Z} \to {\mathbf Q}$ is a periodic function, depending on r and the tower. To provide evidence for these conjectures, we collect extensive experimental data based on new and more efficient algorithms for working with differentials on ${\mathbf Z}_p$ -towers of curves, and we prove our conjectures in the case $p=2$ and $r=1$ .