Big Cohen-Macaulay algebras and the vanishing conjecture for maps of Tor in mixed characteristic

Abstract

We prove a version of weakly functorial big Cohen-Macaulay algebras that suffices to establish Hochster-Huneke's vanishing conjecture for maps of Tor in mixed characteristic. As a corollary, we prove an analog of Boutot's theorem that direct summands of regular rings are pseudo-rational in mixed characteristic. Our proof uses perfectoid spaces and is inspired by the recent breakthroughs on the direct summand conjecture by Andr\'{e} and Bhatt.