Jacobians with a vanishing theta-null in genus 4

We give a solution to the weak Schottky problem for genus five Jacobians with a vanishing theta null, answering a question of Grushevsky and Salvati Manni. More precisely, we show that if a principally polarized abelian variety of dimension five has a vanishing theta null with a quadric tangent cone of rank at most three, then it is in the Jacobian locus, up to extra irreducible components. We employ a degeneration argument, together with a study of the ramification loci for ...

To any closed subvariety $Y$ of a complex abelian variety one can attach a reductive algebraic group $G$ which is determined by the decomposition of the convolution powers of $Y$ via a certain Tannakian formalism. For a theta divisor $Y$ on a principally polarized abelian variety, this group $G$ provides a new invariant that naturally endows the moduli space $A_g$ of principally polarized abelian varieties of dimension $g$ with a finite constructible stratification. We determ...

We prove that the fourth powers of theta functions with even characteristics form a basis of the space of even theta functions of order four on a principally polarized Abelian variety without vanishing theta-null.

We discuss the conjecture of Buchstaber and Krichever that their multi-dimensional vector addition formula for Baker-Akhiezer functions characterizes Jacobians among principally polarized abelian varieties, and prove that it is indeed a weak characterization, i.e. that it is true up to additional components, or true precisely under a general position assumption. We also show that this addition formula is equivalent to Gunning's multisecant formula for the Kummer variety. We...

By the Lefschetz embedding theorem, a principally polarized $g$-dimensional abelian variety is embedded into projective space by the linear system of $4^g$ half-characteristic theta functions. Suppose we {\em edit} this linear system by dropping all the theta functions vanishing at the origin to order greater than parity requires. We prove that for Jacobians the edited $4\Theta$ linear system still defines an embedding into projective space. Moreover, we prove that the projec...

In this note we study the geometry of principally polarized abelian varieties (ppavs) with a vanishing theta-null (i.e. with a singular point of order two and even multiplicity lying on the theta divisor). We describe the locus within the theta-null divisor where this singularity is not an ordinary double point. By using theta function methods we first show that this locus does not equal the entire theta-null divisor (this was shown previously by O. Debarre). We then show tha...

We discuss variations of Hodge structures on abelian varieties that arise from intersecting translates of theta divisors with a special focus on the case of abelian varieties of dimension 4

In this paper we prove the $\Gamma_{00}$ conjecture of van Geemen and van der Geer, under the additional assumption that the matrix of coefficients of the tangent has rank at most 2. This assumption is satisfied by Jacobians, and thus our result gives a characterization of the locus of Jacobians among all principally polarized abelian varieties. The proof is by reduction to the (stronger version of the) characterization of Jacobians by semidegenerate trisecants, i.e. by the...

Let $\Theta$ be a symmetric theta divisor on an indecomposable principally polarized complex abelian variety $X$. The linear system $|2\Theta |$ defines a morphism $K:X\ra |2\Theta |^*$, whose image is the Kummer variety $K(X)$ of $X$. When $(X,\theta)$ is the Jacobian of an algebraic curve, there are infinitely many trisecants lines to $K(X)$. Welters has conjectured that the existence of one trisecant line to the Kummer variety should characterize Jacobians. The purpose of ...

We consider the question of when a Jacobian of a curve of genus $2g$ admits a $(2,2)$-isogeny to two polarized dimension $g$ abelian varieties. We find that one of them must be a Jacobian itself and, if the associated curve is hyperelliptic, so is the other. For $g=2$ this allows us to describe $(2,2)$-decomposable genus $4$ Jacobians in terms of Prym varieties. We describe the locus of such genus $4$ curves in terms of the geometry of the Igusa quartic threefold. We also e...