On the bounded-conductor finiteness conjecture in equal characteristic

Abstract: We investigate the equal-characteristic case of the Moon--Taguchi bounded-conductor finiteness conjecture for mod $p$ Galois representations over global function fields. We first establish a conditional finiteness theorem: for any global function field $K$ of characteristic $p$ and any integer $n \ge 1$, there are only finitely many isomorphism classes of continuous, semisimple, everywhere unramified, and geometric representations $$ρ: G_K \to \mathrm{GL}<em>n(\overline{\mathbf{F}}_p)$$ that admit an everywhere unramified characteristic-zero lift. Furthermore, we prove that the conjecture fails in general without this lifting hypothesis. Concretely, we construct infinitely many global function fields $K$ of characteristic $p$ admitting a continuous, surjective, absolutely irreducible, everywhere unramified, and geometric representation $$ρ_r: G_K \twoheadrightarrow \mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbf{F}</em>{p<sup>r})$$ for each integer $r \ge 4$. As a corollary, we construct an everywhere unramified Galois extension (L/K), regular over (\mathbf F_p), with Galois group [ \mathrm{Gal}(L/K)\cong \prod_{r\geq4}\mathrm{PSL}2(\mathbf F{p^r}). ] Combined with known cross-characteristic finiteness theorems, this completely resolves the question posed by Moon and Taguchi in dimension two: such extensions exist over global function fields of characteristic (p), whereas they cannot exist over global function fields of characteristic different from (p).