Cubic threefolds and abelian varieties of dimension five. II (Q938265): Difference between revisions

Intermediate Jacobians of cubic threefolds, like Jacobians and Pryms, are distinguished from general principally polarised abelian varieties (ppavs) by the singularities of the theta divisor. A result in this direction was proved in the first part by \textit{R. Friedman} and the author [J. Algebr. Geom. 14, No. 2, 295--326 (2005; Zbl 1082.14047)] and is refined here. The locus of intermediate Jacobians of cubic 3-folds is shown to be the locus of ppavs of dimension \(5\) such that the theta divisor has isolated singularities and a triple point (or worse). The methods are similar to those of [loc. cit.] and rely on the fact that every ppav of dimension at most \(5\) is a Prym associated with an admissible double cover of a stable curve. The author extends his results on singularities of Prym theta divisors [\textit{S.~Casalaina-Martin}, Singularities of the Prym theta divisor, to appear in Ann. Math. (2), cf. \url{arXiv:math/0405195}] to the case of nodal curves and the main results of the paper follow from this. Two other interesting facts emerge. The intermediate Jacobians are dense in a component of \(S_3\), the locus of ppavs of dimension~\(5\) whose theta divisor has a triple point at least. There are two other components, filled by reducible abelian varieties where one factor is an elliptic curve and the other is in the Andreotti-Mayer locus \(N_0\), i.e.\ has singular theta divisor. By a theorem of Beauville this factor is either a Jacobian or has a vanishing thetanull. The other result here is that \(\dim{\text{ Sing}}_k\Theta\leq d-2k+1\) if \((A,\Theta)\) is an indecomposible ppav of dimension \(d\leq 5\), where \({\text{ Sing}}_k\Theta\) is the locus of \(\geq k\)-fold points. For \(d=4\) and \(d=5\) this improves previous bounds.