We study liftings or deformations of $D$-modules ($D$ is the ring of differential operators from EGA IV) from positive characteristic to characteristic zero using ideas of Matzat and Berthelot’s theory of arithmetic $D$-modules. We pay special attention to the growth of the differential Galois group of the liftings. We also apply formal deformation theory (following Schlessinger and Mazur) to analyze the space of all liftings of a given $D$-module in positive characteristic. At the end we compare the problems...

Suslin’s local-global principle asserts that if a matrix over a polynomial ring vanishes modulo the independent variable and is locally elementary then it is elementary. In this article we prove Suslin’s local-global principle for principal congruence subgroups of Chevalley groups. This result is a common generalization of the result of Abe for the absolute case and Apte, Chattopadhyay and Rao for classical groups. For the absolute case the localglobal principle was recently obtained by Petrov and...