Tate module

In mathematics, a Tate module of an abelian group, named for John Tate, is a module constructed from an abelian group A. Often, this construction is made in the following situation: G is a commutative group scheme over a field K, Ks is the separable closure of K, and A = G(Ks) (the Ks-valued points of G). In this case, the Tate module of A is equipped with an action of the absolute Galois group of K, and it is referred to as the Tate module of G. Given an abelian group A and a prime number p, the p-adic Tate module of A is where A[pn] is the pn torsion of A (i.e. the kernel of the multiplication-by-pn map), and the inverse limit is over positive integers n with transition morphisms given by the multiplication-by-p map A[pn+1] → A[pn]. Thus, the Tate module encodes all the p-power torsion of A. It is equipped with the structure of a Zp-module via When the abelian group A is the group of roots of unity in a separable closure Ks of K, the p-adic Tate module of A is sometimes referred to as the Tate module (where the choice of p and K are tacitly understood). It is a free rank one module over Zp with a linear action of the absolute Galois group GK of K. Thus, it is a Galois representation also referred to as the p-adic cyclotomic character of K. It can also be considered as the Tate module of the multiplicative group scheme Gm,K over K. Given an abelian variety G over a field K, the Ks-valued points of G are an abelian group. The p-adic Tate module Tp(G) of G is a Galois representation (of the absolute Galois group, GK, of K). Classical results on abelian varieties show that if K has characteristic zero, or characteristic l where the prime number p ≠ l, then Tp(G) is a free module over Zp of rank 2d, where d is the dimension of G. In the other case, it is still free, but the rank may take any value from 0 to d (see for example Hasse–Witt matrix). In the case where p is not equal to the characteristic of K, the p-adic Tate module of G is the dual of the étale cohomology . A special case of the Tate conjecture can be phrased in terms of Tate modules.