Erratum: “Abelian Arithmetic Chern–Simons Theory and Arithmetic Linking Numbers”

Abstract

Abstract We wish to point out errors in the paper “Abelian Arithmetic Chern–Simons Theory and Arithmetic Linking Numbers”, International Mathematics Research Notices, Vol. 2017, No. 00, pp. 1–29. The main error concerns the symmetry of the “ramified case” of the height pairing, which relies on the vanishing of the Bockstein map in Proposition 3.5. The surjectivity claimed in the 1st line of the proof of Proposition 3.5 is incorrect. The specific results that are affected are Proposition 3.5; Lemmas 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9; and Corollary 3.11. The definition of the $(S,n)$-height pairing following Lemma 3.9 is also invalid, since the symmetry of the pairing was required for it to be well defined. The results of Section 3 before Proposition 3.5 as well as those of the other Sections are unaffected. Proposition 3.10 is correct, but the proof is unclear and has some sign errors. So we include here a correction. As in the paper, let $I$ be an ideal such that $I^n$ is principal in ${\mathcal{O}}_{F,S}$. Write $I^n=(f^{-1})$. Then the Kummer cocycles $k_n(f)$ will be in $Z^1(U, {{\mathbb{Z}}/{n}{\mathbb{Z}}})$. For any $a\in F$, denote by $a_S$ its image in $\prod _{v\in S} F_v$. Thus, we get an element $$\begin{equation*}[f]_{S,n}:=[(k_n(f), k_{n^2}(f_S), 0)] \in Z^1(U, {{{\mathbb{Z}}}/{n}{{\mathbb{Z}}}} \times_S{\mathbb{Z}}/n^2{\mathbb{Z}}),\end{equation*}$$which is well defined in cohomology independently of the choice of roots used to define the Kummer cocycles. (We have also trivialized both $\mu _{n^2}$ and $\mu _n$.)