In this paper, we study the universal lifting spaces of local Galois representations valued in arbitrary reductive group schemes when $\ell \neq p$. In particular, under certain technical conditions applicable to any root datum, we construct a canonical smooth component in such spaces, generalizing the minimally ramified deformation condition previously studied for classical groups. Our methods involve extending the notion of isotypic decomposition for a $\operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n$-valued representation to general reductive group schemes. To deal with certain scheme-theoretic issues coming from this notion, we are led to a detailed study of certain families of disconnected reductive groups, which we call weakly reductive group schemes. Our work can be used to produce geometric lifts for global Galois representations, and we illustrate this for $\mathrm {G}_2$-valued representations.

Let K be a perfect field of characteristic p > 0; A1 := K〈x, ∂|∂x−x∂=1〉 be the first Weyl algebra; and Z:=K[X:=xp, Y:=∂p] be its centre. It is proved that (i) the restriction map res : AutK(A1)→ AutK(Z), σ ↦ σ|Z is a monomorphism with im(res) = Γ := {τ ∈ AutK(Z)|(τ)=1}, where (τ) is the Jacobian of τ, (Note that AutK(Z)=K* ⋉ Γ, and if K is not perfect then im(res) ≠ Γ.); (ii) the bijection res : AutK(A1) → Γ is a monomorphism of infinite dimensional algebraic groups which is not an isomorphism (even if K is algebraically closed); (iii) an explicit formula for res−1 is found via differential operators (Z) on Z and negative powers of the Fronenius map F. Proofs are based on the following (non-obvious) equality proved in the paper: