Pure Anderson Motives and Abelian Sheaves over Finite Fields

Abstract

Pure t-motives were introduced by G. Anderson as higher dimensional generalizations of Drinfeld modules, and as the appropriate analogs of abelian varieties in the arithmetic of function fields. In this article we develop their theory regarding morphisms, isogenies, Tate modules, and local shtukas. The later are the analog of p-divisible groups. We investigate which pure t-motives are semisimple, that is, isogenous to direct sums of simple ones. We give examples for pure t-motives which are not semisimple. Over finite fields the semisimplicity is equivalent to the semisimplicity of the endomorphism algebra, but also this fails over infinite fields. Still over finite fields we study the endomorphism rings of pure t-motives and obtain answers which are similar to Tate's famous results for abelian varieties. Finally we clarify the relation of pure t-motives to the abelian τ-sheaves introduced by the second author for the purpose of constructing moduli spaces. We obtain an equivalence of the respective quasi-isogeny categories.