Global Frobenius liftability I

Abstract

We formulate a conjecture characterizing smooth projective varieties in positive characteristic whose Frobenius morphism can be lifted modulo $p^2$ - we expect that such varieties, after a finite \'etale cover, admit a toric fibration over an ordinary abelian variety. We prove that this assertion implies a conjecture of Occhetta and Wi\'sniewski, which states that in characteristic zero a smooth image of a projective toric variety is a toric variety. To this end we analyse the behaviour of toric varieties in families showing some generization and specialization results. Furthermore, we prove a positive characteristic analogue of Winkelmann's theorem on varieties with trivial logarithmic tangent bundle (generalising a result of Mehta-Srinivas), and thus obtaining an important special case of our conjecture. Finally, using deformations of rational curves we verify our conjecture for homogeneous spaces, solving a problem posed by Buch-Thomsen-Lauritzen-Mehta.