An Inverse Theorem for the Uniformity Seminorms Associated with the Action of {{\mathbb {F}^{\infty}_{p}}}

Let ${\mathbb {F}}Let \mathbb F{\mathbb {F}} a finite field. We show that the universal characteristic factor for the Gowers–Host–Kra uniformity seminorm U ^k (X) for an ergodic action (T_g)_{g ? \mathbb F^w}{(T_{g})_{{g} \in \mathbb {F}^{\omega}}} of the infinite abelian group \mathbb F^w{\mathbb {F}^{\omega}} on a probability space X = (X, B, m){X = (X, \mathcal {B}, \mu)} is generated by phase polynomials f: X ? S¹{\phi : X \to S^{1}} of degree less than C(k) on X, where C(k) depends only on k. In the case where k ￡ char(\mathbb F){k \leq {\rm char}(\mathbb {F})} we obtain the sharp result C(k) = k. This is a finite field counterpart of an analogous result for \mathbb Z{\mathbb {Z}} by Host and Kra HK]. In a companion paper TZ] to this paper, we shall combine this result with a correspondence principle to establish the inverse theorem for the Gowers norm in finite fields in the high characteristic case k ￡ char(\mathbb F){k \leq {\rm char}(\mathbb {F})} , with a partial result in low characteristic.