GROUP ACTION ON THE DEFORMATIONS OF A FORMAL GROUP OVER THE RING OF WITT VECTORS

Abstract

A recent result by the authors gives an explicit construction for a universal deformation of a formal group $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}$ of finite height over a finite field $k$ . This provides in particular a parametrization of the set of deformations of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}$ over the ring ${\mathcal{O}}$ of Witt vectors over $k$ . Another parametrization of the same set can be obtained through the Dieudonné theory. We find an explicit relation between these parameterizations. As a consequence, we obtain an explicit expression for the action of $\text{Aut}_{k}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7})$ on the set of ${\mathcal{O}}$ -deformations of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}$ in the coordinate system defined by the universal deformation. This generalizes a formula of Gross and Hopkins and the authors’ result for one-dimensional formal groups.