Symmetric correspondences with decomposable minimal equation (Q2240453)

A correspondence of a smooth projective curve \(C\) into itself is a divisor on the product \(C\times C\). The aim of this paper is to study symmetric completely decomposable correspondences, that is correspondences which satisfy a minimal equation on smooth projective curves \(C\) over the rationals all of whose zeros are rational numbers. Such a correspondence induces a decomposition up to isogeny of the corresponding Jacobian into a product of abelian subvarieties which are given by the zeros of the minimal polynomial. For all positive integers \(g\) and \(l\), the authors give series of examples of smooth curves \(C\) of genus \(n^l(g-1)+1\) with correspondences satisfying minimal equations of degree \(l+1\) such that the Jacobian of \(C\) has at least \(2^l\) isogeny components. This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 is an introduction to the subject and summarizes the main results. In Section 2 the authors define completely decomposable correspondences and derive the corresponding decomposition of the Jacobian. Section 3 deals with étale covers of curves with automorphisms and contains the proof of the main theorem and its consequences. Finally, Section 4 contains the statement and proof of the irreducibility criterion for the curve \(C\).