Rigid cohomology over Laurent series field I: First definitions and basic properties

Abstract: This is the first in a series of papers in which we construct and study a new $p$-adic cohomology theory for varieties over Laurent series fields $k(!(t)!)$ in characteristic $p$. This will be a version of rigid cohomology, taking values in the bounded Robba ring $\mathcal{E}_K^\dagger$, and in this paper, we give the basic definitions and constructions. The cohomology theory we define can be viewed as a relative version of Berthelot's rigid cohomology, and is constructed by compactifying $k(!(t)!)$-varieties as schemes over $k[![ t]!]$ rather than over $k(!(t)!)$. We reprove the foundational results necessary in our new context to show that the theory is well defined and functorial, and we also introduce a category of `twisted' coefficients. In latter papers we will show some basic structural properties of this theory, as well as discussing some arithmetic applications including the weight monodromy conjecture and independence of $\ell$ results for equicharacteristic local fields.