A homological criterion for reducibility of analytic spaces, with application to characterizing the theta divisor of a product of two general principally polarized abelian varieties (Q1320371)

The simplest example of a codimension one singularity of an irreducible analytic space \(X\) is an ordinary rank two double locus \(\Sigma\). By definition \(\Sigma\) is a closed subset of \(X\) of codimension one, every point of which has an analytic neighbourhood isomorphic to a neighbourhood of a singular point on a transverse union of two smooth hypersurfaces. If \(X\) is a curve, \(\Sigma\) is a set of ordinary double points. The main result of the paper yields a bound for the number of components \(\Sigma\) can have, in terms of homological invariants of \(X\). (This can be seen as a generalization of the fact that an irreducible plane curve of degree \(d\) can not have more than \({1\over 2} (d - 1) (d - 2)\) singular points.) Additionally various corollaries are proven. For example, it is shown that a reduced compact analytic space \(X\) with \(h^1 (X, \mathbb{Z}/ 2\mathbb{Z}) = 0\) admitting a nontrivial ordinary rank two double locus is reducible. As another consequence it is shown that a principally polarized abelian variety \((A, \Theta)\) of dimension \(\geq 3\) is isomorphic to the product of two indecomposable nontrivial principally polarized abelian varieties with smooth theta divisors if and only if \(\Theta\) contains a nonempty ordinary rank two double locus \(\Sigma\).