Functional degrees and arithmetic applications III: Beyond Prime Exponent

Abstract: Continuing our work on group-theoretic generalizations of the prime Ax-Katz Theorem, we give a lower bound on the $p$-adic divisibility of the cardinality of the set of simultaneous zeros $Z(f_1,f_2,\ldots,f_r)$ of $r$ maps $f_j:A\rightarrow B_j$ between arbitrary finite commutative groups $A$ and $B_j$ in terms of the invariant factors of $A, B_1,B_2,\dotsc,B_r$ and the \emph{functional degrees} of the maps $f_1,f_2,\dotsc,f_r$.