Relative Artin motives and the reductive Borel-Serre compactification of a locally symmetric variety

Abstract: We introduce the notion of Artin motives and cohomological motives over a scheme X. Given a cohomological motive M over X, we construct its punctual weight zero part $\omega^0_X(M)$ as the universal Artin motive mapping to M. We use this to define a motive E_X over X which is an invariant of the singularities of X. The first half of the paper is devoted to the study of the functors $\omega^0_X$ and the computation of the motives E_X. In the second half of the paper, we develop the application to locally symmetric varieties. Specifically, let Y be a locally symmetric variety and denote by p:W-->Z the projection of its reductive Borel-Serre compactification W onto its Baily-Borel Satake compactification Z. We show that $Rp_*(\Q_W)$ is naturally isomorphic to the Betti realization of the motive E_Z, where Z is viewed as a scheme. In particular, the direct image of E_Z along the projection of Z to Spec(C) gives a motive whose Betti realization is naturally isomorphic to the cohomology of W.