Cohomology of locally closed semi-algebraic subsets

Let k be a non-Archimedean field, let ? be a prime number distinct from the characteristic of the residue field of k. If χ is a separated k-scheme of finite type, Berkovich’s theory of germs allows to define étale ?-adic cohomology groups with compact support of locally closed semi-algebraic subsets of χ ^an . We prove that these vector spaces are finite dimensional continuous representations of the Galois group of k ^sep /k, and satisfy the usual long exact sequence and Künneth formula. This has been recently used by E. Hrushovski and F. Loeser in a paper about the monodromy of the Milnor fibration. In this statement, the main difficulty is the finiteness result, whose proof relies on a cohomological finiteness result for affinoid spaces, recently proved by V. Berkovich.