Syntomic regulators and special values of p -adic L -functions

Abstract

In this paper p-adic analogs of the Lichtenbaum Conjectures are proven for abelian number fields F and odd prime numbers p, which generalize Leopoldt's p-adic class number formula, and express special values of p-adic L-functions in terms of orders of K-groups and higher p-adic regulators. The approach uses syntomic regulator maps, which are the p-adic equivalent of the Beilinson regulator maps. They can be compared with etale regulators via the Fontaine-Messing map, and computations of Bloch-Kato in the case that p is unramified in F lead to results about generalized Coates-Wiles homomorphisms and cyclotomic characters.