Among the many differences between classical and p-adic objects, those
related to differential equations occupy a special place. For example, a
closed p-adic analytic one-form defined on a simply-connected domain
does not necessarily have a primitive in the class of analytic
functions. In the early 1980s, Robert Coleman discovered a way to
construct primitives of analytic one-forms on certain smooth p-adic
analytic curves in a bigger class of functions. Since then, there have
been several attempts to generalize his ideas to smooth p-adic analytic
spaces of higher dimension, but the spaces considered were invariably
associated with algebraic varieties.
This book aims to show that every smooth p-adic analytic space is
provided with a sheaf of functions that includes all analytic ones and
satisfies a uniqueness property. It also contains local primitives of
all closed one-forms with coefficients in the sheaf that, in the case
considered by Coleman, coincide with those he constructed. In
consequence, one constructs a parallel transport of local solutions of a
unipotent differential equation and an integral of a closed one-form
along a path so that both depend nontrivially on the homotopy class of
the path.
Both the author's previous results on geometric properties of smooth
p-adic analytic spaces and the theory of isocrystals are further
developed in this book, which is aimed at graduate students and
mathematicians working in the areas of non-Archimedean analytic
geometry, number theory, and algebraic geometry.