Strongly Liftable Schemes and the Kawamata-Viehweg Vanishing in Positive Characteristic

A smooth scheme X over a field k of positive characteristic is said to be strongly liftable, if X and all prime divisors on X can be lifted simultaneously over W_2(k). In this paper, we give some concrete examples and properties of strongly liftable schemes. As an application, we prove that the Kawamata-Viehweg vanishing theorem in positive characteristic holds on any normal projective surface which is birational to a strongly liftable surface.