A probabilistic approach to systems of parameters and Noether normalization

Abstract

We study systems of parameters over finite fields from a probabilistic perspective and use this to give the first effective Noether normalization result over a finite field. Our central technique is an adaptation of Poonen’s closed point sieve, where we sieve over higher dimensional subvarieties, and we express the desired probabilities via a zeta function-like power series that enumerates higher dimensional varieties instead of closed points. This also yields a new proof of a recent result of Gabber, Liu and Lorenzini (2015) and Chinburg, Moret-Bailly, Pappas and Taylor (2017) on Noether normalizations of projective families over the integers.