Submission date: 27 June 2008.

Abstract:

To a definable subset of Z_p^n (or to a scheme of finite type over Z_p) one can associate a tree in a natural way. It is known that the corresponding Poincare series P(X) = \sum_i N_i X^i is rational, where N_i is the number of nodes of the tree at depth i. This suggests that the trees themselves are far from arbitrary. We state a conjectural, purely combinatorial description of the class of possible trees and provide some evidence for it. We verify that any tree in our class indeed arises from a definable set, and we prove that the tree of a definable set (or of a scheme) lies in our class in three special cases: under weak smoothness assumptions, for definable subsets of Z_p^2, and for one-dimensional sets.

Mathematics Subject Classification: 11G25, 03C60, 11U09, 14B05, 14G20

Keywords and phrases: trees, definable sets, p-adic numbers, Poincare series

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