Special subvarieties arising from families of cyclic covers of the projective line (Q612861)

A family of curves of genus \(g\) is special, if the corresponding family of Jacobians yields an open subset of a Shimura subvariety in the moduli space of abelian varieties of dimension \(g\). Such a family contains a dense set of complex multiplication fibers. This is of interest because of the Coleman Conjecture, which states that there are only finitely many complex multiplication curves of fixed genus \(g\) for all \(g>3\). Thus a special family of genus \(g>3\) curves, which is not locally constant, is a counter-example to the Coleman Conjecture. The paper under review deals with families of cyclic covers \(f: C\to T\) of the projective line with \(N\geq 4\) branch points given by \[ V(y^m - (x-t_1)^{a_1}\cdot\ldots\cdot(x-t_N)^{a_N})\longmapsto (t_1,\ldots, t_N). \] There is a list of 20 families of such cyclic covers, which are special. This list, which has been previously known, contains all known counterexamples to the Coleman Conjecture given by families of curves of genus \(4, 5, 6\) and \(7\). It has been proved by the reviewer [Cyclic coverings, Calabi-Yau manifolds and complex multiplication. Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1975. Berlin: Springer (2009; Zbl 1168.14001)] that there are no additional examples for \(N = 4\). It is the main result of the paper under review that the list of 20 families of cyclic covers, which are special, is complete. The proof uses the description of a connection in characteristic \(p\) by \textit{B. Dwork} and \textit{A. Ogus} [Compos. Math. 58, 111--131 (1986; Zbl 0603.14029)]. In the paper in review this result is generalized and an explicit equation of the connection is given. If the family \(f: C\to T\) of cyclic covers is special, there is a prime number \(p\) such that this connection vanishes on the reduction of \(f:C\to T\) modulo \(p\). Then combinatorial arguments are used to show that there cannot exist any further example of a special family of cyclic covers of the projective line.