Canonical lifts and $\delta$-structures

Abstract

We extend the Serre-Tate theory of canonical lifts of ordinary abelian varieties to arbitrary unpolarised families of ordinary abelian varieties parameterised by a $p$-adic formal scheme $S$. We show that the canonical lift is the unique lift to $W(S)$ which admits a $\delta$-structure in the sense of Joyal, Buium, and Bousfield. We prove analogous statements for families of ordinary $p$-groups and $p$-divisible groups.