Tate cycles on a product of two Hilbert modular surfaces (Q1969342)

Given a smooth projective variety defined over a number field \(K\) and a finite extension \(L\) of \(K\), let \(Z_j (X;L)\) denote the free abelian group generated by codimension \(j\) subvarieties of \(X\) defined over \(L\). Then there is a cycle class map \[ Z_\ell (X;L) \otimes \mathbb Q_\ell \to H^{2j}_\ell (\overline{X}) (j)^{\text{Gal} (\overline{\mathbb Q}/L)} \] with values in the \(\ell\)-adic cohomology, and a conjecture of Tate asserts that this map is surjective. The space \(\text{Ta}_\ell (X)\) of Tate cycles is given by \[ \text{Ta}_\ell (X) = \bigcup_{\ell \in L} H^{2j}_\ell (\overline{X}) (j)^{\text{Gal} (\overline{\mathbb Q}/L)}. \] Let \(F_1\) and \(F_2\) be real quadratic fields, and let \(S_1\) and \(S_2\) be the associated Hilbert modular surfaces. In this paper the authors prove that \(\text{Ta}_\ell (S_1 \times S_2)\) is spanned by \(\text{Ta}_\ell (S_1) \otimes \text{Ta}_\ell (S_2)\) and certain additional codimension 2 cycles. Since Tate cycles on a Hilbert modular surface are known to be algebraic, the Tate conjecture for \(S_1 \times S_2\) is equivalent to the algebraicity of these additional cycles.