Compactifications of universal abelian threefolds with CM (Q845794)

The construction of arithmetic compactifications of moduli spaces of abelian varieties was begun by Mumford and considerably extended by \textit{G. Faltings} and \textit{C.-L. Chai} (see [Degeneration of abelian varieties. Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete. 3. Folge, 22. Berlin etc.: Springer-Verlag. xii, 316 p. (1990; Zbl 0744.14031)]). From a motivic point of view it is often necessary to work with smooth compactifications. The present paper gives such a compactification in the case of universal abelian threefolds with complex multiplication. The Shimura variety \(X\) associated to the moduli of abelian threefolds with complex multiplication and an additional structure is a Picard modular surface. It is a fine moduli space. Let \(A\to X\) be the universal abelian scheme over \(X\). The paper gives an explicit construction of a smooth compactification \(\overline A\to\overline X\) of \(A\to X\) by computing relatively complete models. For this, first a smooth toroidal compactification of Picard modular surfaces over the field of complex numbers is constructed. The construction of relatively complete models works over more general base field than \(\mathbb{C}\). The results are applied in a recent paper by \textit{A. Miller}, \textit{S. Müller-Stach}, \textit{S. Wortmann}, \textit{Y.-H. Yang} and \textit{K. Zuo} [in: Algebraic cycles and motives. Volume 2. Selected papers of the EAGER conference, Leiden, Netherlands 2004 on the occasion of the 75th birthday of Professor J. P. Murre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series 344, 241--276 (2007; Zbl 1127.14013)].