Motivic decompositions of families with Tate fibers: smooth and singular cases

Abstract

We apply Wildeshaus's theory of motivic intermediate extensions to the motivic decomposition conjecture, formulated by Deninger-Murre and Corti-Hanamura. We first obtain a general motivic decomposition for the Chow motive of an arbitrary smooth projective family $f:X \rightarrow S$ whose geometric fibers are Tate. Using Voevodsky's motives with rational coefficients, the formula is valid for an arbitrary regular base $S$, without assuming the existence of a base field or even of a prime integer $\ell$ invertible on $S$. This result, and some of Bondarko' ideas, lead us to a generalized formulation of Corti-Hanamura's conjecture. Secondly we establish the existence of the motivic decomposition when $f:X \rightarrow S$ is a projective quadric bundle over a characteristic $0$ base, which is either sufficiently general or whose discriminant locus is a normal crossing divisor. This provides a motivic lift of the Bernstein-Beilinson-Deligne decomposition in this setting.