We define and study infinite root stacks of fine and saturated logarithmic schemes, a limit version of the root stacks introduced by Niels Borne and the second author in Adv. Math. (231 (2012Math. (231 ( ) 1327Math. (231 ( -1363. We show in particular that the infinite root stack determines the logarithmic structure and recovers the Kummer-flat topos of the logarithmic scheme. We also extend the correspondence between parabolic sheaves and quasi-coherent sheaves on root stacks to this new setting.
ContentsBoth authors were supported in part by the PRIN project 'Geometria delle varietà algebriche e dei loro spazi di moduli' from MIUR, and by research funds from the Scuola Normale SuperioreThe infinite root stack. In this paper we construct an algebraic version of the Kato-Nakayama space, the infinite root stack ∞ √ X of X, which is a proalgebraic stack over X. For this we build on the construction of the root stacks B √ X in [7] (denoted by X B/M X there), which in turn is based on several particular cases constructed by Olsson [29,34]. Denote by α X : M X → O X the logarithmic structure on X, a fine saturated logarithmic scheme, and set M X def = M X /O * X ; then M X is a sheaf of monoids on the smallétale site Xé t , whose geometric fibers are sharp fine saturated monoids (these are the monoids that appear in toric geometry, consisting of the integral points in a strictly convex rational polyhedral cone in some R n ). A Kummer extension B of M X is, roughly speaking, a sheaf of monoids containing M X , such that every section of B has locally a positive multiple in M X (see [7, Definition 4.2]); the typical example is the sheaf 1 d M X of fractions of sections of M X with some fixed denominator S ∞ √ X; this is a proalgebraic stack that can be described very explicitly, but is not an infinite root stack. It has some advantages over (X 0 , M X0 ); for example, the projection s 0 ×∞ √X → X 0 can be used as a substitute for (X 0 , M X0 ) in problems such as degenerations of Gromov-Witten invariants. We plan to go back to this in a later paper.This 'central fiber' of the infinite root stack, and much of the basic formalism developed in the present article, is crucial in the recent work [38] about a logarithmic version of the derived McKay correspondence, of S. Scherotzke, N. Sibilla and the first author.