Abelian varieties are special examples of projective varieties. As such theycan be described by a set of homogeneous polynomial equations. The theory ofabelian varieties originated in the beginning of the ninetheenth centrury with the work of Abel and Jacobi. The subject of this book is the theory of abelian varieties over the field of complex numbers, and it covers the main results of the theory, both classic and recent, in modern language. It is intended to give a comprehensive introduction to the field, but also to serve as a reference. The focal topics are the projective embeddings of an abelian variety, their equations and geometric properties. Moreover several moduli spaces of abelian varieties with additional structure are constructed. Some special results onJacobians and Prym varieties allow applications to the theory of algebraic curves. The main tools for the proofs are the theta group of a line bundle, introduced by Mumford, and the characteristics, to be associated to any nondegenerate line bundle. They are a direct generalization of the classical notion of characteristics of theta functions.

This book brings the researcher up to date with recent applications of mathematical logic to number theory.

This book presents an elementary and self-contained approach to Abelian varieties, a subject that plays a central role in algebraic and analytic geometry, number theory, and complex analysis. The book is based on notes from a course given at Concordia University and would be useful for independent study or as a textbook for graduate courses in complex analysis, Riemann surfaces, number theory, or analytic geometry. Murty works mostly over the complex numbers, discussing the theorem of Abel-Jacobi and Lefschetz's theorem on projective embeddings. After presenting some examples, Murty touches on Abelian varieties over number fields, as well as the conjecture of Tate (Faltings's theorem) and its relation to Mordell's conjecture. References are provided to guide the reader in further study.

This graduate-level textbook introduces the classical theory of complex tori and abelian varieties, while presenting in parallel more modern aspects of complex algebraic and analytic geometry. Beginning with complex elliptic curves, the book moves on to the higher-dimensional case, giving characterizations from different points of view of those complex tori which are abelian varieties, i.e., those that can be holomorphically embedded in a projective space. This allows, on the one hand, for illuminating the computations of nineteenth-century mathematicians, and on the other, familiarizing readers with more recent theories. Complex tori are ideal in this respect: One can perform "hands-on" computations without the theory being totally trivial. Standard theorems about abelian varieties are proved, and moduli spaces are discussed. Recent results on the geometry and topology of some subvarieties of a complex torus are also included. The book contains numerous examples and exercises. It is a very good starting point for studying algebraic geometry, suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in algebra and algebraic geometry. Information for our distributors: SMF members are entitled to AMS member discounts.

Reciprocity laws of various kinds play a central role in number theory. In the easiest case, one obtains a transparent formulation by means of roots of unity, which are special values of exponential functions. A similar theory can be developed for special values of elliptic or elliptic modular functions, and is called complex multiplication of such functions. In 1900 Hilbert proposed the generalization of these as the twelfth of his famous problems. In this book, Goro Shimura provides the most comprehensive generalizations of this type by stating several reciprocity laws in terms of abelian varieties, theta functions, and modular functions of several variables, including Siegel modular functions. This subject is closely connected with the zeta function of an abelian variety, which is also covered as a main theme in the book. The third topic explored by Shimura is the various algebraic relations among the periods of abelian integrals. The investigation of such algebraicity is relatively new, but has attracted the interest of increasingly many researchers. Many of the topics discussed in this book have not been covered before. In particular, this is the first book in which the topics of various algebraic relations among the periods of abelian integrals, as well as the special values of theta and Siegel modular functions, are treated extensively.

Abelian varieties can be classified via their moduli. In positive characteristic the structure of the p-torsion-structure is an additional, useful tool. For that structure supersingular abelian varieties can be considered the most special ones. They provide a starting point for the fine description of various structures. For low dimensions the moduli of supersingular abelian varieties is by now well understood. In this book we provide a description of the supersingular locus in all dimensions, in particular we compute the dimension of it: it turns out to be equal to Äg.g/4Ü, and we express the number of components as a class number, thus completing a long historical line where special cases were studied and general results were conjectured (Deuring, Hasse, Igusa, Oda-Oort, Katsura-Oort).

This volume is the result of a (mainly) instructional conference on arithmetic geometry, held from July 30 through August 10, 1984 at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. This volume contains expanded versions of almost all the instructional lectures given during the conference. In addition to these expository lectures, this volume contains a translation into English of Falt ings' seminal paper which provided the inspiration for the conference. We thank Professor Faltings for his permission to publish the translation and Edward Shipz who did the translation. We thank all the people who spoke at the Storrs conference, both for helping to make it a successful meeting and enabling us to publish this volume. We would especially like to thank David Rohrlich, who delivered the lectures on height functions (Chapter VI) when the second editor was unavoidably detained. In addition to the editors, Michael Artin and John Tate served on the organizing committee for the conference and much of the success of the conference was due to them-our thanks go to them for their assistance. Finally, the conference was only made possible through generous grants from the Vaughn Foundation and the National Science Foundation.