Slope filtrations for relative Frobenius

Abstract

The slope filtration theorem gives a partial analogue of the eigenspace decomposition of a linear transformation, for a Frobenius-semilinear endomorphism of a finite free module over the Robba ring (the ring of germs of rigid analytic functions on an unspecified open annulus of outer radius 1) over a discretely valued field. In this paper, we give a third-generation proof of this theorem, which both introduces some new simplifications (particularly the use of faithfully flat descent, to recover the theorem from a classification theorem of Dieudonne-Manin type) and extends the result to allow an arbitrary action on coefficients (previously the action on coefficients had to itself be a lift of an absolute Frobenius). This extension is relevant to a study of (phi, Gamma)-modules associated to families of p-adic Galois representations, presently being initiated by Berger and Colmez.