Vanishing theorems for constructible sheaves on abelian varieties over finite fields

Let \(\kappa \) be a field, finitely generated over its prime field, and let k denote an algebraically closed field containing \(\kappa \). For a perverse \(\overline{\mathbb {Q}}_\ell \)-adic sheaf \(K_0\) on an abelian variety \(X_0\) over \(\kappa \), let K and X denote the base field extensions of \(K_0\) and \(X_0\) to k. Then, the aim of this note is to show that the Euler–Poincare characteristic of the perverse sheaf K on X is a non-negative integer, i.e. \(\chi (X,K)=\sum _\nu (-1)^\nu \dim _{\overline{\mathbb {Q}}_\ell }(H^\nu (X,K))\ge 0\). This generalizes the result of Franecki and Kapranov 9] for fields of characteristic zero. Furthermore we show that \(\chi (X,K)=0\) implies K to be translation invariant. This result allows to considerably simplify the proof of the generic vanishing theorems for constructible sheaves on complex abelian varieties of 11]. Furthermore it extends these vanishing theorems to constructible sheaves on abelian varieties over finite fields.