On a conjecture of Voisin on the gonality of very general abelian varieties (Q2182266)

Given a projective variety \(X\), the \textit{covering gonality} is the minimal gonality of an irreducible curve through a general point \(x \in X\) and the \textit{degree of irrationality} is the minimal degree of a rational dominant map \(X \dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{\dim X}\). In the paper [Ann. Henri Lebesgue 1, 313--332 (2018; Zbl 1451.14132)], \textit{C. Voisin} studies orbits of zero-cycles for rational equivalence on abelian varieties and uses this to show that a very general abelian variety of dimension \(g\) has covering gonality at least \(f(g)\), where \(f(g)\) grows like \(\log g\). This answers a question in [\textit{F. Bastianelli} et al., Compos. Math. 153, No. 11, 2368--2393 (2017; Zbl 1387.14118)]. In addition, Voisin conjectures that one should be able to give a linear bound from below in \(g\). The purpose of this paper is to prove the conjecture above. More precisely, the author shows that for \(k \geq 3\), a very general abelian variety of dimension at least \(2k - 2\) has covering gonality at least \(k+1\) (see Cor. 4.7). This is achieved by generalizing the techniques of Voisin to subvarieties of powers \(A^{k}\) of an abelian variety \(A\) and proving a generic finiteness result in this setting. As an application, the author improves bounds due to \textit{A. Alzati} and \textit{G. P. Pirola} [Arch. Math. 59, No. 4, 398--402 (1992; Zbl 0739.14002)] on the degree of irrationality of very general abelian varieties.