On endomorphisms of affine spaces and the Jacobian problem

Abstract

Let $p$ be a prime. We provide examples which show that étale endomorphisms of affine planes over an algebraically closed field $k$ of characteristic $p$ can have fibers of arbitrary finite cardinal. Let $(l,m)\in\mathbb N\times\mathbb N^{\ast}$. We provide examples of such étale endomorphisms whose images have complements of cardinality $l$ and whose geometric degrees are $pm$. Several conjectures are disproved, and in particular we provide an analog over $k$ of Kulikov's counterexample to the `Generalized Jacobian Conjecture' of Bass for surfaces. Surjective (resp.\ surjective and non-surjective) counterexamples to Adjamagbo's Jacobian Conjecture over each $k$ are included in dimension $2$ (resp.\ in all dimensions at least $3$); for instance, if $p=2$, then we show for each $m$ there exist surjective étale endomorphisms of the affine spaces over $k$ of dimension at least $3$ of geometric degree $m$. If $e:X\rightarrow X$ is an endomorphism of a variety over an algebraically closed field $K$, then we show that there exists $n\in\mathbb N$ such that $\Imm(e^n)=\Imm(e^{n+1})$ provided either (i) $e$ is quasi-finite or (ii) $\dim(X)\le 2$ and $X\setminus\Imm(e)$ is finite. We provide examples of endomorphisms of affine planes of dimensions at least $3$ over $K$ whose images have complements of cardinality $l$ and for all $n\in\mathbb N$ we have $\Imm(e^n)\neq\Imm(e^{n+1})$. We prove that all affine moduli schemes of étale endomorphisms of affine spaces with Jacobian matrices of determinant 1 over $K$ are connected and classify all those that are smooth. We prove that the Jacobian Conjecture over $\mathbb C$ and Adjamagbo's analog of it over $k$ hold for étale endomorphisms of affine spaces that are composites $g\circ f$, where $f$ is quasi-finite and a locally closed embedding in codimension $1$ outside a specific finite subset and $g$ is a projection that omits one coordinate.