Monodromy of Hecke-invariant subvarieties (Q2471437)

Let \(\mathcal A_g\) be the reduction modulo a prime \(p\) of the moduli space of \(g\)-dimensional principally polarized abelian varieties. The author studies \(\ell\)-adic monodromies of subvarieties \(Z\) of \(\mathcal A_g\) which are stable under \(\ell\)-adic Hecke correspondences for any prime \(\ell\neq p\). He proves that if Hecke correspondences operate transitively on the set of irreducible components of \(Z\) and maximal points of \(Z\) are not supersingular, then the monodromy group is as large as possible and \(Z\) is irreducible. He also proves that the prime-to-\(p\) monodromy group is as large as possible under the same condition. The proof uses the semisimplicity of the geometric monodromy group of a pure \(\mathbb Q_\ell\)-sheaf of a variety over a finite field due to Grothendieck and Deligne [\textit{P. Deligne}, Inst. Hautes Études Sci., Publ. Math. 52, 137--252 (1980; Zbl 0456.14014)]. The other part of proof is group-theoretic; he particularly shows that there are no subgroups of finite index in \(\text{Sp}_{2g}(\mathbb Q_\ell)\). The results in this paper are useful to determine the irreducibility of subvarieties which are defined by certain properties of the underlying \(p\)-divisible groups and not contained in the supersingular locus. The method can be applied to some more general moduli spaces of PEL-type.