Abelian Variety - Structure of The Group of Points

Structure of The Group of Points

By the definitions, an abelian variety is a group variety. Its group of points can be proven to be commutative.

For C, and hence by the Lefschetz principle for every algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, the torsion group of an abelian variety of dimension g is isomorphic to (Q/Z)2g. Hence, its n-torsion part is isomorphic to (Z/nZ)2g, i.e. the product of 2g copies of the cyclic group of order n.

When the base field is an algebraically closed field of characteristic p, the n-torsion is still isomorphic to (Z/nZ)2g when n and p are coprime. When n and p are not coprime, the same result can be recovered provided one interprets it as saying that the n-torsion defines a finite flat group scheme of rank 2g. If instead of looking at the full scheme structure on the n-torsion, one considers only the geometric points, one obtains a new invariant for varieties in characteristic p (the so-called p-rank when n = p).

The group of k-rational points for a global field k is finitely generated by the Mordell-Weil theorem. Hence, by the structure theorem for finitely generated abelian groups, it is isomorphic to a product of a free abelian group Zr and a finite commutative group for some non-negative integer r called the rank of the abelian variety. Similar results hold for some other classes of fields k.