A connectedness result in positive characteristic

Abstract

Let $(R,m)$ be a complete local ring of positive dimension, which contains a separably closed coefficient field of prime characteristic. Using a vanishing theorem of Peskine-Szpiro, Lyubeznik proved that every element of the local cohomology module $H^1_m(R)$ is killed by an iteration of the Frobenius map if and only if $R$ has dimension at least two and its punctured spectrum is connected in the Zariski topology. We give a simple proof of this theorem and of a variation which, more generally, yields the number of connected components.