The description of the Hasse–Weil zeta function
up to finitely many factors of its Euler product is relatively simple. This follows the initial suggestions of
Helmut Hasse and
André Weil, motivated by the
Riemann zeta function, which results from the case when
V is a single point. Taking the case of
K the
rational number field \mathbb{Q}, and
V a
non-singular projective variety, for
almost all prime numbers
p the reduction of
V modulo
p, an algebraic variety
Vp over the
finite field \mathbb{F}_{p} with
p elements (defined by reducing modulo
p equations for
V). Again for almost all
p it will be projective and non-singular. We define a
Dirichlet series of the
complex variable s, :Z_{V\!,\mathbb{Q}}(s) = \prod_{p} Z_{V\!,\,p}(p^{-s}), which is the
infinite product of the
local zeta functions : Z_{V\!,\,p}(p^{-s}) = \exp\left(\sum_{k = 1}^\infty \frac{N_k}{k} (p^{-s})^k\right) where
Nk is the number of points of
V defined over the finite field extension \mathbb{F}_{p^k} of \mathbb{F}_{p}. This Z_{V\!,\mathbb{Q}}(s) is
well-defined only up to multiplication by
rational functions in p^{-s} for finitely many primes
p. Since the indeterminacy is relatively harmless, and has
meromorphic continuation everywhere, there is a sense in which the properties of
Z(s) do not essentially depend on it. In particular, while the exact form of the
functional equation for
Z(
s), reflecting in a vertical line in the complex plane, will definitely depend on the 'missing' factors, the existence of some such functional equation does not. A more refined definition became possible with the development of
étale cohomology; this neatly explains what to do about the missing, 'bad reduction' factors. According to general principles visible in
ramification theory, 'bad' primes carry good information (theory of the
conductor). This manifests itself in the étale theory in the
Néron–Ogg–Shafarevich criterion for
good reduction; namely that there is good reduction, in a definite sense, at all primes
p for which the
Galois representation ρ on the étale cohomology groups of
V is
unramified. For those, the definition of local zeta function can be recovered in terms of the
characteristic polynomial of :\rho(\operatorname{Frob}(p)), Frob(
p) being a
Frobenius element for
p. What happens at the ramified
p is that ρ is non-trivial on the
inertia group I(
p) for
p. At those primes the definition must be 'corrected', taking the largest quotient of the representation ρ on which the inertia group acts by the
trivial representation. With this refinement, the definition of
Z(
s) can be upgraded successfully from 'almost all'
p to
all p participating in the Euler product. The consequences for the functional equation were worked out by
Serre and
Deligne in the later 1960s; the functional equation itself has not been proved in general. ==Hasse–Weil conjecture==