Knots, primes and class field theory

Alain Connes, Caterina Consani

Published 2025-01-11Version 1

In this paper, we present a geometric generalization of class field theory, demonstrating how adelic constructions, central to the spectral realization of zeros of L-functions and the geometric framework for explicit formulas in number theory, naturally extend the classical theory. This generalization transitions from the idele class group, which acts as the adelic analog of Galois groups, to a geometric framework associated with schemes and the ring of integers of global fields. This perspective provides a conceptual explanation for the role of the adele class space in the spectral realization of L-function zeros and identifies the idele class group as a generic point in this context. The sector $X_{\mathbb{Q}}$ of the adele class space corresponding to the Riemann zeta function gives the class field counterpart of the scaling topos. The main result is the construction of a functor mapping finite abelian extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$ to finite covers of $X_{\mathbb{Q}}$, with the monodromy of periodic orbits of length $\log p$ under the scaling action corresponding to the Galois action of the Frobenius at the prime p.