Contents

Contents

Idea

The pro-étale site is a variant of the étale site where the finiteness conditions on the fibers of étale morphisms is relaxed to a pro-finiteness condition (pro-étale morphisms)

The sheaf topos over the pro-étale site might be called the pro-étale topos. Its abelian sheaf cohomologypro-étale cohomology – improves on that of the original étale topos in that it genuinely contains (Bhatt-Scholze 13) the Weil cohomology theory called ℓ-adic cohomology (while over the étale site this is only given by an inverse limit of abelian sheaf cohomology).

Definition

Definition

For $X$ a scheme, its pro-étale site $X_{proet}$ is the site whose objects are pro-étale morphisms into $X$ and whose Grothendieck topology is that of the fpqc site.

Properties

In terms of weakly étale maps

Definition

A morphism $f \colon X \longrightarrow Y$ of schemes is called weakly étale if

1. $f$ is a flat morphism of schemes;

2. its diagonal $X \longrightarrow X \times_Y X$ is also flat.

Definition

For $X$ a scheme, its pro-étale site $X_{proet}$ is the site whose objects are weakly étale morphisms into $X$ (hence weakly étale $X$-schemes) and whose Grothendieck topology is that of the fpqc site.

Generation by w-contractible rings

Definition

A commutative ring $R$ is a w-contractible ring if every faithfully flat pro-étale morphism $Spec A \to Spec R$ has a section.

Proposition

For every commutative ring $R$, there is a a w-contractible $A$, def. , equipped with a faithfully flat pro-étale morphism $Spec A \to Spec R$.

Remark

So the full subcategory on the w-contractible rings forms a dense subsite of the pro-étale site, consisting of objects with pro-étale homotopy type a set.

Relation to the étale topos

Definition

Since every étale morphism of schemes is in particular a pro-étale morphism, there is induced a geometric morphism

$\nu \;\colon\; Sh(X_{proet}) \longrightarrow Sh(X_{et})$

from the pro-étale topos to the étale topos of any scheme $X$.

Proposition

$\nu$ is a surjective geometric morphism with fully faithful inverse image. Hence the ordinary étale topos is a coreflection of the pro-étale topos.

Examples

Given a field $k$ with separable closure $\overline{k}$, then the pro-etale site of $Spec(\overline{k})$ is equivalently the category of profinite sets. The pro-etale site of $Spec(k)$ identifies with the category of profinite continuous $G$-sets. (Bhatt-Scholze 13, example 4.1.10).

References

The pro-étale topology was suggested by Scholze and then fully developed in

Some results used in the study of weakly étale maps appeared earlier in

• Ofer Gabber and Lorenzo Ramero, Almost ring theory, volume 1800 of Lecture Notes in Mathematics. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003. (arXiv:math/0201175)

A textbook account is in

Further developments include

• Takashi Suzuki, Duality for local fields and sheaves on the category of fields (arXiv:1310.4941)

Last revised on May 1, 2019 at 10:38:48. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.