Dual Abelian Variety - Definition

Definition

To an abelian variety A over a field k, one associates a dual abelian variety Av (over the same field), which is the solution to the following moduli problem. A family of degree 0 line bundles parametrized by a k-variety T is defined to be a line bundle L on A×T such that

  1. for all, the restriction of L to A×{t} is a degree 0 line bundle,
  2. the restriction of L to {0}×T is a trivial line bundle (here 0 is the identity of A).

Then there is a variety Av and a family of degree 0 line bundles P, the Poincaré bundle, parametrized by Av such that a family L on T is associated a unique morphism f: T → Av so that L is isomorphic to the pullback of P along the morphism 1A×f: A×T → A×Av. Applying this to the case when T is a point, we see that the points of Av correspond to line bundles of degree 0 on A, so there is a natural group operation on Av given by tensor product of line bundles, which makes it into an abelian variety.

In the language of representable functor one can state the above result as follows. The contravariant functor, which associates to each k-variety T the set of families of degree 0 line bundles on T and to each k-morphism f: T → T' the mapping induced by the pullback with f, is representable. The universal element representing this functor is the pair (Av, P).

This association is a duality in the sense that there is a natural isomorphism between the double dual Avv and A (defined via the Poincaré bundle) and that it is contravariant functorial, i.e. it associates to all morphisms f: A → B dual morphisms fv: Bv → Av in a compatible way. The n-torsion of an abelian variety and the n-torsion of its dual are dual to each other when n is coprime to the characteristic of the base. In general - for all n - the n-torsion group schemes of dual abelian varieties are Cartier duals of each other. This generalizes the Weil pairing for elliptic curves.

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