Fixed points of endomorphisms of complex tori (Q2636376)

This article studies the asymptotic behavior of the number of fixed points \(\#\mathrm{Fix}(f^n)\) of the iteration of an endomorphism \(f\in \mathrm{End}(X)\) of a complex torus \(X\). As this number is known to be \[\#\mathrm{Fix}(f^n)=\left|\prod_{i=1}^{g}(1-\lambda_i^n)\right|^2\] for the eigenvalues \(\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_g\) of the differential of \(f\) at zero, this reduces to a study of the eigenvalues. The main theorem states that \(\#\mathrm{Fix}(f^n)\) either grows exponentially, is periodic or grows exponentially except for some periodically repeating zeros. For two-dimensional complex tori this was already proven by \textit{T. Bauer} and \textit{T. Herrig} [J. Algebra 458, 351--363 (2016; Zbl 1346.14002)]. Their proof generalizes well to higher-dimensional complex tori, except for the case, that one of the eigenvalues has absolute value \(1\), but is not a root of unity. This case really occurs in higher dimensions, for example for \(X=E^3\), where \(E\) denotes the unique elliptic curve with an automorphism of order \(4\). The authors complete the proof by applying Baker's Theorem on the independence of logarithms of algebriac numbers to relate \(\frac{1}{n}\log\#\mathrm{Fix}(f^n)\) to the toplogical entropy \(\sum_{i=1}^g \log\max\{1,|\lambda_i|\}\) of \(f\). As a corollary of the theorem, they deduce that an abelian variety \(X\) is simple if and only if \(\#\mathrm{Fix}(f^n)\) is periodic or grows exponentially for every endomorphism \(f\in\mathrm{End}(X)\).