The Frobenius structure of local cohomology

Abstract

Given a local ring of positive prime characteristic there is a natural Frobenius action on its local cohomology modules with support at its maximal ideal. In this paper we study the local rings for which the local cohomology modules have only finitely many submodules invariant under the Frobenius action. In particular we prove that F-pure Gorenstein local rings as well as the face ring of a finite simplicial complex localized or completed at its homogeneous maximal ideal have this property. We also introduce the notion of an antinilpotent Frobenius action on an Artinian module over a local ring and use it to study those rings for which the lattice of submodules of the local cohomology that are invariant under Frobenius satisfies the ascending chain condition.