Cubic threefolds and abelian varieties of dimension five. II (Q938265)

Intermediate Jacobians of cubic threefolds, like Jacobians and Pryms, are distinguished from general principally polarised abelian varieties (ppavs) by the singularities of the theta divisor. A result in this direction was proved in the first part by \textit{R. Friedman} and the author [J. Algebr. Geom. 14, No. 2, 295--326 (2005; Zbl 1082.14047)] and is refined here. The locus of intermediate Jacobians of cubic 3-folds is shown to be the locus of ppavs of dimension \(5\) such that the theta divisor has isolated singularities and a triple point (or worse). The methods are similar to those of [loc. cit.] and rely on the fact that every ppav of dimension at most \(5\) is a Prym associated with an admissible double cover of a stable curve. The author extends his results on singularities of Prym theta divisors [\textit{S.~Casalaina-Martin}, Singularities of the Prym theta divisor, to appear in Ann. Math. (2), cf. \url{arXiv:math/0405195}] to the case of nodal curves and the main results of the paper follow from this. Two other interesting facts emerge. The intermediate Jacobians are dense in a component of \(S_3\), the locus of ppavs of dimension~\(5\) whose theta divisor has a triple point at least. There are two other components, filled by reducible abelian varieties where one factor is an elliptic curve and the other is in the Andreotti-Mayer locus \(N_0\), i.e.\ has singular theta divisor. By a theorem of Beauville this factor is either a Jacobian or has a vanishing thetanull. The other result here is that \(\dim{\text{ Sing}}_k\Theta\leq d-2k+1\) if \((A,\Theta)\) is an indecomposible ppav of dimension \(d\leq 5\), where \({\text{ Sing}}_k\Theta\) is the locus of \(\geq k\)-fold points. For \(d=4\) and \(d=5\) this improves previous bounds.