[Math] Open problems in Berkovich geometry

berkovich-geometryopen-problemsreference-request

I would like to know if there is a state of the art recent reference on non-archimedean analytic spaces mentioning/listing open problems, conjectures, unresolved questions in the theory (*). I have looked for such a reference a bit, but didn't find anything. In case there is really nothing, I would be glad if experts in the field present here could enlighten me.

(*) By "theory" I mean "mainstream" theory over a non-archimedean complete valued field (trivial valuations are accepted), including cohomological questions concerning the spaces themselves, but also theory over Banach rings, as mentioned in Berkovich's AMS monogograph.

I must precise that even if dynamics and potential theory do perfectly fit for an answer, they are not my first target of interest, I am indeed looking for open problems, conjectures, unresolved or partially resolved questions that are more linked to Berkovich's or Temkin's works, that is, to works developing the theory or its links with schemes and formal schemes, cohomology, vanishing cycles.

Best Answer

This is a very broad question and it is difficult to know where to start. Remember that Berkovich's theory is a theory of analytic geometry, hence it makes sense to look for the counterpart of anything you have in complex analytic geometry: does there exist a good notion of Kähler manifold, for instance? I will try to be somehow more specific though and concentrate on the work of Berkovich as you suggest.

In the recent years, there were several attempts to understand the topology of Berkovich spaces better. In [Berkovich, Smooth $p$-adic analytic spaces are locally contractible, Inventiones, 1999], Berkovich proves that every smooth space is locally contractible. In [Hrushovski-Loeser, Non-archimedean tame topology and stably dominated types], they prove that the result holds for quasi-projective spaces. There are also some results by Thuillier, but, as far as I know, there are no written notes yet, and I am afraid that I cannot remember the exact level of generality he deals with. Anyway, I think that the question is open in full generality: are Berkovich spaces locally contractible?

In another direction, Berkovich has written a book called [Integration of One-forms on P-adic Analytic Spaces]. He basically constructs sheafs of primitives of one-forms and their iterates on smooth spaces. He proves that the resulting de Rham complex is exact in degree 0 and 1 but in higher degree the question is open. Edit: I have just realized that, at the end of the introduction of the book, Berkovich gives a list of six open questions, the one I mentioned above being the first one. You may want to have a look at those.

Last, I would like to add a few words about Berkovich's paper [A non-Archimedean interpretation of the weight zero subspaces of limit mixed Hodge structures]. The title says clearly what it is about. The weight zero subspace of some limit of mixed Hodge structures is given an interpretion using the Betti numbers of some Berkovich analytic space. It would certainly be very interesting to say similar things for higher weights.

Edit: I have just realized that I forgot to say something about general Banach rings. Over an arbitrary Banach ring, almost nothing is done and it is even doubtful that one can actually do something in such a gereral setting.

There are some results over $\mathbb{Z}$ (or rings of integers of number fields): properties of local rings, mainly, but this is definitely only the very beginning of the theory. In particular, at the topological level (local arcwise connectedness, local contractibility, etc.) or at the cohomological level (finiteness of cohomology in the proper case, GAGA, etc.), there is nothing (yet). And here, I am only speaking of the usual transcendental topology and of the coherent cohomology. As far as I know, étale morphisms have not even been defined...

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