Exceptional values of Appell hypergeometric functions (Q1770962)

``Exceptional'' in the sense of this article means algebraic arguments at which a certain pair of Appell functions both take algebraic values. Guided by the corresponding theory for the classical Gauss hypergeometric functions, the author proves that these arguments are exceptional if and only if certain Prym varieties in the Jacobians of the corresponding hypergeometric curves (used in the integral representation of the Appell functions) are of complex multiplication type. If the monodromy group of Appell's differential equation is arithmetically defined, there are infinitely many such exceptional arguments. If not, it would follow from Oort-André's conjecture that there are only finitely many. In the case of Gauss hypergeometric functions, the corresponding problem was partly solved by the reviewer in ``Werte hypergeometrischer Funktionen'' [Invent. Math. 92, 187--216 (1988; Zbl 0649.10022)]; a serious gap in this work was filled by \textit{B. Edixhoven} and \textit{A. Yafaev} in ``Subvarieties of Shimura varieties'' [Ann. Math. (2) 157, 621--645 (2003; Zbl 1053.14023)].