The geometric Bogomolov conjecture (Q2657473)

The \textit{Bogomolov conjecture} is a celebrated problem in arithmetic geometry stemming from the special case of curves proposed by Fedor Bogomolov in 1981. Simply stated, the conjeture affirms that, in an ambient abelian variety defined over a number filed, a subvariety contains a lot of ``small points'' if and only if it is ``special'' (namely the translation of an abelian subvariety by a torsion point). As torsion points are ``small'', the problem can be regarded as a strengthening of the well-known Manin-Mumford conjecture. The idea of using arithmetic intersection theory to attack this problem is due to Lucien Szpiro, and the proof of the Bogomolov conjecture was later achieved by \textit{E. Ullmo} [Ann. Math. (2) 147, No. 1, 167--179 (1998; Zbl 0934.14013)] and \textit{S.-W. Zhang} [Ann. Math. (2) 147, No. 1, 159--165 (1998; Zbl 0991.11034)], building on a variation of the equidistribution theorem from \textit{L. Szpiro} et al. [Invent. Math. 127, No. 2, 337--347 (1997; Zbl 0991.11035)]. Due to the similarities between number fields and function fields, it is natural to ask the same question for subvariaties of an abelian variety defined over a function field. Such a problem is known as the \textit{geometric Bogomolov conjecture}. While in the general case the naive transposition of the conjecture over number fields fails, based on partial results due to Walter Gubler, Aleksei Parshin, Atushi Moriwaki, Xander Faber, Zubeyir Cinkir and himself, Kazuhiko Yamaki gave a precise formulation of the geometric Bogomolov conjecture in [\textit{K. Yamaki}, Manuscripta Math. 142, No. 3--4, 273--306 (2013: Zbl 1281.14018)] by giving a formal definition of ``special subvarieties'' which involves traces. Many cases of this conjecture have been shown over the years, see the detailed survey in [\textit{K. Yamaki}, Publ. Math. Besançon Algèbre Théorie, vol. 2017/1, Presses Univ. Franche-Comté, Besançon, 137--193 (2017: Zbl 1404.14028). The present article gives a complete proof of this conjecture in the characteristic zero case. For this, the authors make use of the Betti map and its monodromy.