Let $U$ be a smooth affine curve over a number field $K$ with a compactification $X$ and let ${\mathbb {L}}$ be a rank $2$, geometrically irreducible lisse $\overline {{\mathbb {Q}}}_\ell$-sheaf on $U$ with cyclotomic determinant that extends to an integral model, has Frobenius traces all in some fixed number field $E\subset \overline {\mathbb {Q}}_{\ell }$, and has bad, infinite reduction at some closed point $x$ of $X\setminus U$. We show that ${\mathbb {L}}$ occurs as a summand of the cohomology of a family of abelian varieties over $U$. The argument follows the structure of the proof of a recent theorem of Snowden and Tsimerman, who show that when $E=\mathbb {Q}$, then ${\mathbb {L}}$ is isomorphic to the cohomology of an elliptic curve $E_U\rightarrow U$.

Investigating a conjecture of Zannier, we study irreducible subvarieties of abelian schemes that dominate the base and contain a Zariski dense set of torsion points that lie on pairwise isogenous fibers. If everything is defined over the algebraic numbers and the abelian scheme has maximal variation, we prove that the geometric generic fiber of such a subvariety is a union of torsion cosets. We go on to prove fully or partially explicit versions of this result in fibered powers of the Legendre family of elliptic curves. Finally, we apply a recent result of Galateau and Martínez to obtain uniform bounds on the number of maximal torsion cosets in the Manin–Mumford problem across a given isogeny class. For the proofs, we adapt the strategy, due to Lang, Serre, Tate, and Hindry, of using Galois automorphisms that act on the torsion as homotheties to the family setting.

The main result of this paper concerns the positivity of the Hodge bundles of abelian varieties over global function fields. As applications, we obtain some partial results on the Tate–Shafarevich group and the Tate conjecture of surfaces over finite fields.

Let $\mathcal {A} \rightarrow S$ be an abelian scheme over an irreducible variety over $\mathbb {C}$ of relative dimension $g$. For any simply-connected subset $\Delta$ of $S^{\mathrm {an}}$ one can define the Betti map from $\mathcal {A}_{\Delta }$ to $\mathbb {T}^{2g}$, the real torus of dimension $2g$, by identifying each closed fiber of $\mathcal {A}_{\Delta } \rightarrow \Delta$ with $\mathbb {T}^{2g}$ via the Betti homology. Computing the generic rank of the Betti map restricted to a subvariety $X$ of $\mathcal {A}$ is useful to study Diophantine problems, e.g. proving the geometric Bogomolov conjecture over char $0$ and studying the relative Manin–Mumford conjecture. In this paper we give a geometric criterion to detect this rank. As an application we show that it is maximal after taking a large fibered power (if $X$ satisfies some conditions); it is an important step to prove the bound for the number of rational points on curves (Dimitrov et al., Uniformity in Mordell–Lang for Curves, Preprint (2020), arXiv:2001.10276). Another application is to answer a question of André, Corvaja and Zannier and improve a result of Voisin. We also systematically study its link with the relative Manin–Mumford conjecture, reducing the latter to a simpler conjecture. Our tools are functional transcendence and unlikely intersections for mixed Shimura varieties.

Let $V$ be a complete discrete valuation ring with residue field $k$ of characteristic $p>0$ and fraction field $K$ of characteristic zero. Let ${\cal S}$ be a formal scheme over $V$ and let $\mathfrak{X}\to {\cal S}$ be a locally projective formal abelian scheme. In this paper we prove that, under suitable natural conditions on the Hasse–Witt matrix of $\mathfrak{X}\otimes_V V/\mathit{pV}$, the kernel of the Frobenius morphism on $\mathfrak{X}_k$ can be canonically lifted to a finite and flat subgroup scheme of $\mathfrak{X}$ over an admissible blow-up of ${\cal S}$, called the ‘canonical subgroup of $\mathfrak{X}$’. This is done by a careful study of torsors under group schemes of order $p$ over $\mathfrak{X}$. We also present a filtration on ${\rm H}^1(\mathfrak{X},\mu_p)$ in the spirit of the Hodge–Tate decomposition.

To a symmetric, relatively ample line bundle on an Abelian scheme one can associate a linear combination of the determinant bundle and the relative canonical bundle, which is a torsion element in the Picard group of the base. We improve the bound on the order of this element found by Faltings and Chai. In particular, we obtain an optimal bound when the degree of the line bundle d is odd and the set of residue characteristics of the base does not intersect the set of primes p dividing d, such that p$\equiv -1$ mod(4) and p$\le 2$g$-1$, where g is the relative dimension of the Abelian scheme. Also, we show that in some cases these torsion elements generate the entire torsion subgroup in the Picard group of the corresponding moduli stack.