Local André-Oort conjecture for the universal abelian variety (Q811856)

There is a conjectural dictionary between abelian varieties and Shimura varieties, in which torsion points correspond to moduli points of abelian varieties with complex multiplication (``special points''), and translates of sub-abelian varieties correspond to Hecke images of components of Shimura subvarieties (``special subvarieties''). The André-Oort conjecture asserts that each component of the Zariski closure of a set of special points in a Shimura variety is a special subvariety [\textit{F. Oort}, in: Arithmetic geometry, Proc. Conf. Cortona, Symp. Math. 37, 228--234 (1994; Zbl 0911.14018)]. Let \({\mathcal A} = {\mathcal A}_{g,1,n}\) be the moduli space of \(g\)-dimensional principally polarized abelian varieties with full level-\(n\) structure, and let \(\pi:{\mathcal X} \rightarrow {\mathcal A}\) be the tautological abelian scheme over the space. \textit{B. Moonen} has proved a version of the André-Oort conjecture for \({\mathcal A}\) [Compos. Math. 114, No. 1, 3--35 (1998; Zbl 0960.14012)]; the present paper uses a mix of logic and algebraic geometry to an analogous statement for \({\mathcal X}\). Let \(R\) be a finite extension of \(W({\mathbb F}_p^{\text{alg}})\). A point \(a \in {\mathcal A}(R)\) is called \(R\)-special if the special fiber of \({\mathcal X}_a\) is ordinary, and if the abelian scheme \({\mathcal X}_a/R\) is a canonical lift of that special fiber. Call \(\xi \in {\mathcal X}({\mathbb C})\) special if \(\pi(\xi)\in {\mathcal X}({\mathbb C})\) is special and if \(\xi\) is a torsion point of \({\mathcal X}_{\pi(\xi)}\), and define an \(R\)-special point of \({\mathcal X}(R)\) analogously. Finally, a subvariety \(Y\subset {\mathcal X}_{\mathbb C}\) is called special if \(\pi(Y) \subset {\mathcal A}_{\mathbb C}\) is special and if there exists a positive integer \(M\) such that the variety \([M](Y)\) is an abelian subscheme of \({\mathcal X}_{\pi(Y)}\). With these definitions, the main result of this paper is: Theorem 1. If \(Y\subseteq {\mathcal X}_{\mathbb C}\) is an irreducible subvariety containing a Zariski dense set of \(R\)-special points, then \(Y\) is a special subvariety of \({\mathcal X}_{\mathbb C}\). The proof uses the model theory of difference fields and Moonen's work on the André-Oort conjecture. Roughly, an abelian variety \(X/R\) is a canonical lift if it admits an isogeny \(X \rightarrow X^\sigma\) lifting the Frobenius endomorphism of the closed fiber, where \(\sigma: R \rightarrow R\) is the Witt-Frobenius. The author uses the theory of difference rings to relate \(X\) and \(X^\sigma\), and thus to produce a series of reductions of Theorem 1. Let \(Y\) be as in the statement of that theorem. Moonen's result describes the image \(\pi(Y)\); the author uses the fact that \(Y\) is stable under (lifts of) Hecke correspondences to show that \([M]Y\) is a sub-abelian scheme for suitable \(M\). Subsequently, the author shows that Theorem 1 holds if \(R\) is replaced with a finite extension of \(W(k)\) for any algebraically closed field of positive characteristic. The paper closes with a series of results and conjectures about the \(p\)-adic proximity of an \(R\)-special point to a given subvariety of \({\mathcal X}\).