Some density results for curves with non-simple jacobians (Q752791)

The purpose of this paper is to give some density results for polarized abelian varieties that admit an abelian subvariety of fixed dimension. Let \(\psi: X\to U\) be a smooth family of polarized abelian varieties of relative dimension g, with a polarization \(<\cdot >\in \Gamma (R^ 2\psi_*{\mathbb{Z}})\). Let \(S_ k= \{t\in U: \psi^{-1}(t)\) contains an abelian subvariety of dimension \(k\}.\) Under generic conditions on U (see criterion 2) the authors prove that the closure of \(S_ k\) contains an open subset of U (theorem 1. In section 2 they apply the density results to the case of families of jacobians of curves. In particular, let \(D_ k= \{\) the curves of genus g which admit a map to an abelian variety of dimension \(k\}.\) Then \(D_ k\) is dense in the moduli space \(M_ g\) of curves of genus g (g\(\geq 3)\), for \(k=1,2,3\) (theorem 3); note that \(D_ k\cap U=S_ k\), for U open in \(M_ g.\) In the next sections, the authors prove some further results about density (especially, for families of hyperelliptic curves (proposition 4), smooth plane curves (proposition 6), etc.). As an application they prove that the generic abelian threefold contains a countable number of rigid (up to translation) curves of genus \(g\geq 6,\) which are different in the moduli (theorem 7), etc.