Varieties characterized by their endomorphisms (Q743739)

This paper considers the question of when an isomorphism between endomorphism semigroups implies an isomorphism between the underlying spaces. An important initial observation is that the endomorphism semigroup of any space \(X\) includes the identity map and a constant map for each point in \(X\). The main result in this paper may be viewed as a natural addition to a series of successful efforts to show that \(X\) is determined by its endomorphism semigroup -- first for certain Riemann surfaces \(X\), then for bounded domains in \(\mathbb{C}^n\), then for \(\mathbb{C}^n\) itself, and then for certain Stein manifolds. Here, the result (up to an automorphism of the base field) is proven when \(X\) is an affine variety defined over any algebraically closed field and \(\mathbb{A}^1\) embeds in \(X\) as a closed subvariety. To address the limitations of the main conclusion, the paper includes a nice digression into endomorphisms of simple abelian varieties. It is shown that there are many examples of affine subvarieties of simple abelian varieties whose endomorphism semigroups contain nothing more than the identity map and constant maps. The paper's main result follows primarily from the fact that the statement is true in the special case where \(X=\mathbb{A}^1\), and the proof of this fact is the key technical element of the paper.