nLab Grothendieck's Galois theory

Idea

In topology, the fundamental theorem of covering spaces says that for a sufficiently nice topological space, the fundamental group at a point can be reconstructed as a group of deck transformations of the universal covering space, which is the same as the automorphisms of the fiber over that point of the projection map. The deck transformations are monodromies induced by loops at the base point.

The functor which assigns to a point the fiber over it, generalizes to fiber functors in the Tannakian formalism of Grothendieck which defines in more general setups the fundamental groupoid as the group of automorphisms of the appropriate fiber functor. See also at fundamental group of a topos.

Now, Grothendieck’s Galois theory means to generalize to the context of schemes this familiar correspondence between

covering spaces of $X$ : $\pi_1(X)$-sets

for locally path connected, semilocally simply connected topological spaces $X$.

The objects on the left are not difficult to define for schemes (at least naively – one really needs trivialisations over étale covers), but it may not be entirely immediate what the fundamental group defined in terms of loops should be.

The reason Galois’s name is attached to this theory is that in the case of the scheme $Spec(k)$ associated to a field $k$, the objects corresponding to the covering spaces are simply the schemes $Spec(k')$ for field extensions $k'$, and the fundamental group of $Spec(k)$ is the Galois group of $k$. More generally Grothendieck’s Galois theory assigns to any scheme $X$ an algebraic fundamental group $\pi_1(X)$, which is a profinite group.

Generalizations

The basic idea of Grothendieck’s Galois theory may be extended to objects in an topos – leading to a notion of fundamental group of a topos – and then further to objects in any (∞,1)-topos. For more on this see homotopy group of an ∞-stack.

Details

Preliminaries

Definition

Given an arrow $f:x \to y$ in a category $C$ the category of arrows compatible with $f$, denoted $Comp(f)$ is the full subcategory of the undercategory $x \downarrow C$ on the arrows that coequalize the same pairs $g,h:w\rightrightarrows x$ that $f$ does.

Definition

An arrow $f:x\to y$ in a category $C$ is a strict epimorphism if it is initial in $Comp(f)$.

It is not obvious, but a strict epimorphism is an epimorphism.

Grothendieck’s axioms

In what follows, Let $C$ be a category and $F:C \to Set$ a functor. The axioms presented here are as in

J. P. Murre, Lectures on an introduction to Grothendieck’s theory of the fundamental group, Tata Inst. of Fund. Res. Lectures on Mathematics 40, Bombay, 1967. iv+176+iv pp.

and copied also in

• Eduardo Dubuc, C. S. de la Vega On the Galois theory of Grothendieck, Bol. Acad. Nac. Cienc. (Cordoba) 65 (2000) 111–136. arXiv

Some terminology: $X\in C$ is called finite if $F(X)$ is a finite set. Let $\int_F C$ denote the category of elements of $F$, in which an object $(X,a)$ is called finite if $X$ is finite.

• G0) The full subcategory of $\int_F C$ on the finite objects is cofinal.

• G1) $C$ has all finite limits

• G2) $C$ has an initial object, finite coproducts and quotients by finite groups

• G3) Given $f:x\to z$ in $C$ there is a factorisation $x \stackrel{e}{\to} y \stackrel{i}{\to} z$ where $e$ is a strict epimorphism and $i$ is a mono. Also, $y$ is assumed to be a direct summand of $z$.

• G4) $F$ preserves finite limits

• G5) $F$ preserves initial object, finite sums, quotients by finite group actions and sends strict epimorphisms to surjections

• G6) $F$ reflects isomorphisms

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The functor $F$ is called the fibre functor, and the pair $(C,F)$ is sometimes called a Galois category.

It follows from the axioms that $F$ is a pro-representable functor. The automorphism group of the pro-object $P$ representing $F$ is (should be. I’m not familiar enough with pro-objects) a profinite group $\pi$. This acts on $F(X) = [P,-]$ by precomposition (talking out of my depth here – it’s getting a bit vague) and so $F$ lifts to a functor to $\pi-Set$, and Grothendieck’s result is that this functor is an equivalence of categories.

There are several modifications one can make the above. In the case that $C$ is the category of covering spaces of a nice enough space, the functor $F$ is representable by the universal covering space, and so there is a ‘representable’ version of the above, not needing to utilise profinite groups. One can also consider just the connected-objects version, and end up with an equivalence to the category of transitive $\pi$-sets.

The classical case of fields

Even for the classical case of the inclusion of fields, Grothendieck’s Galois theorem gives more general statement than the previously known. This is the Grothendieck’s version of the Galois correspondence theorem for fields:

Let $K \subset L$ be a finite dimensional Galois extension of fields. Let $Gal[L : K]$ denote the group of $K$-automorphisms of $L$ and $Gal [L : K]-finSet$ the category of finite $Gal[L : K]$-sets. By $SplitfinAlg_K(L)$ denote the finite dimensional $K$-algebras which are split over $L$; here $L$ itself is an object. Consider the representable functor $h_L = Hom_K(-,L):SplitfinAlg_K(L)\to Set$. It takes values in the subcategory of finite sets and it comes with a canonical $Gal[L : K]$-action. In other words, this functor factors through $Gal [L : K]-finSet$. Moreover, the corresponding functor

$$SplitfinAlg_K(L)\to Gal [L : K]-finSet$$

is an equivalence of categories.

There is an infinitary version as well, generalizing the classical Galois theorem on infinitary Galois extensions.

Thus let $K\subset L$ be an arbitrary Galois extension. Now $Gal[L:K]$ denotes the profinite Galois group and $Gal[L:K]-profinSpace$ the category or profinite $Gal[L:K]$-spaces. $SplitAlg_K(L)$ denotes the category of $K$-algebras split over $L$ (possible infinite-dimensional). Then there is a canonical anti-equivalence of categories

$$SplitAlg_K(L)\to Gal [L : K]-profinSpace$$

(factorizing a profinite-space version of the representable functor $Hom_K(-,L)$).

A special case of this is the following: the category of étale k-schemes reps. étale group schemes? for a field $k$ is equivalent to the category of sets equipped with an action of the absolute Galois group reps. to the category of Galois modules of the absolute Galois group.

Galois theorem for locales and topoi

Let $E$ be a Grothendieck topos. Then there exist an open localic groupoid $G$ such that $E$ is equivalent to the category of étale presheaves over $G$. (Joyal & Tierney 1984, see also at classifying topos of a localic groupoid).

Related entries

• classifying topos of a localic groupoid

References

The original development of the theory by Grothendieck is in

• Alexander Grothendieck, (1971), SGA1 – Revetements étales et groupe fondamental, Lecture Notes in Maths. 224, Springer-Verlag.

See also:

• J. P. Murre, Lectures on an introduction to Grothendieck’s theory of the fundamental group, Tata Inst. of Fund. Res. Lectures on Mathematics 40, Bombay, 1967. iv+176+iv pp.

• André Joyal, Myles Tierney, An extension of the Galois theory of Grothendieck, Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 309 (1984) [ISBN:978-1-4704-0722-3]

A more recent treatment can be found in

• Eduardo Dubuc, C. S. de la Vega, On the Galois theory of Grothendieck, Bol. Acad. Nac. Cienc. (Cordoba) 65 (2000) 111–136. arXiv:math.CT/0009145

and more related categorical and topos theoretic aspects in

• Eduardo Dubuc, Localic Galois theory, Adv. Math. 175:1 (2003), 144–167 doi; On the representation theory of Galois and atomic topoi, JPAA 186:3 (2004) 233–275 doi

A very approachable account is given in

• Marco Antònio Delgado Robalo, Galois theory towards dessins d’enfants, masters thesis, Lisboa 2009, pdf

(This has the advantage of looking towards Grothendieck’s dessins d'enfants.)

Some basic intuitions are explained in

• Pierre Cartier, A mad day’s work: from Grothendieck to Connes and Kontsevich The evolution of concepts of space and symmetry, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 38 (2001), 389-408, pdf

The construction for general toposes is described in section 8.4 of

• Peter Johnstone, Topos theory, Academic Press (1977)

and, a current state-of-the-art description is in

• Marta Bunge, Galois groupoids and covering morphisms in topos theory, Galois theory, Hopf algebras, and semiabelian categories, 131–161, Fields Inst. Commun. 43, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2004, links.

A modern approach from classical via Grothendieck up to categorical Galois theory based on precategories and adjunctions is in

• Francis Borceux, George Janelidze, Galois Theories, Cambridge Studies in Adv. Math. 72, 2001. xiv+341 pp.

The application of a general Tannakian theorem of Saavaedra Rivano, as corrected by Deligne, to the “differential Galois theory” for differential instead of algebraic equations is in the last chapter of Deligne’s Catégories Tannakiennes.

• George Janelidze, Dietmar Schumacher, Ross Street, Galois theory in variable categories, Applied Categorical Structures 1, Number 1, 103-110, DOI: 10.1007/BF00872989
• Federico G. Lastaria, On separable algebras in Grothendieck Galois theory, Le Matematiche 51:3, 1996, link

category: Galois theory