Jacobians with group actions and rational idempotents (Q858705)

The object of this paper is to prove some general results about rational idempotents for a finite group \(G\) and deduce from them geometric information about the components that appear in the decomposition of the Jacobian variety \(JW\) of a curve \(W\) with a \(G\)-action. The simplest and best understood case is when \(G = {\mathbb Z}/2{\mathbb Z}\), which gives rise to a decomposition of \(JW\) into a \(G\)-invariant and \(G\)-antiinvariant parts \(B_1\) and \(B_2\), (i.e. an isogeny \(JW \sim B_1 \times B_2\)) with \(B_1\) isogenous to the Jacobian of the quotient curve \(W/G\) and \(B_2\) being the Prym variety of \((W, {\mathbb Z}/2{\mathbb Z})\) [see \textit{D. Mumford}, in: Contribut. to Analysis, Collect. of Papers dedicated to Lipman Bers, 325--350 (1974; Zbl 0299.14018)]. After that, cases of other special groups (dihedral groups, symmetric and alternating groups of small order, some Weyl groups, etc.) have been studied by J. Ries, S. Recillas, V. Kanev, R. Donagi, J.-Y. Merindol, H. Lange, etc. (see the reference list). R. Donagi (for Jacobians \(A\)) and then J.-Y. Merindol (for abelian varieties \(A\)) gave a decomposition of \(A\) with an action of a finite group \(G\) in the cases when all irreducible rational representations of \(G\) are absolutely irreducible, i.e. when they remain irreducible as complex representations [\textit{R. Donagi}, Astérisque 218, 145--175 (1993; Zbl 0820.14031); \textit{J.-Y. Mérindol}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 461, 49--61 (1995; Zbl 0814.14043)]. Under this condition they gave formulae for the rational projectors whose images are the required factors of the decomposition. Recently \textit{H. Lange} and \textit{S. Recillas} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 575, 135--155 (2004; Zbl 1072.14053)] gave the general decomposition for any abelian variety admitting a group action. In this paper the authors find the corresponding rational projectors for the general case. They also describe the rational projectors invariant under any given subgroup, and give a condition for a Prym variety of an intermediate cover to be such a factor. Two appendices in the end of the paper regard two examples of actions of groups \(G\) that have rational irreducible but not absolutely irreducible representations. The first example illustrates the authors' construction of rational idempotents, and the second exhibits a factor in the decomposition of a Jacobian that is neither a Jacobian nor a Prym variety.