Unlikely intersections on the p-adic formal ball

We investigate generalizations along the lines of the Mordell–Lang conjecture of the author’s p-adic formal Manin–Mumford results for n-dimensional p-divisible formal groups [Formula: see text] . In particular, given a finitely generated subgroup [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] and a closed subscheme [Formula: see text] , we show under suitable assumptions that for any points [Formula: see text] satisfying [Formula: see text] for some [Formula: see text] , the minimal such orders n are uniformly bounded whenever X does not contain a formal subgroup translate of positive dimension. In contrast, we then provide counter-examples to a full p-adic formal Mordell–Lang result. Finally, we outline some consequences for the study of the Zariski-density of sets of automorphic objects in p-adic deformations. Specifically, we do so in the context of the nearly ordinary p-adic families of cuspidal cohomological automorphic forms for the general linear group constructed by Hida.