Rigid local systems with monodromy group the Conway group Co2

Abstract

We first develop some basic facts about hypergeometric sheaves on the multiplicative group [Formula: see text] in characteristic [Formula: see text]. Certain of their Kummer pullbacks extend to irreducible local systems on the affine line in characteristic [Formula: see text]. One of these, of rank [Formula: see text] in characteristic [Formula: see text], turns out to have the Conway group [Formula: see text], in its irreducible orthogonal representation of degree [Formula: see text], as its arithmetic and geometric monodromy groups.