Characteristic cycle of a rank one sheaf and ramification theory

Abstract

We compute the characteristic cycle of a rank one sheaf on a smooth surface over a perfect field of positive characteristic. We construct a canonical lifting on the cotangent bundle of Kato’s logarithmic characteristic cycle using ramification theory and prove the equality of the characteristic cycle and the canonical lifting. As corollaries, we obtain a computation of the singular support in terms of ramification theory and the Milnor formula for the canonical lifting.