Conductor of an abelian variety

In mathematics, in Diophantine geometry, the conductor of an abelian variety defined over a local or global field F is a measure of how "bad" the bad reduction at some prime is. It is connected to the ramification in the field generated by the torsion points.

Definition

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For an abelian variety A defined over a field F as above, with ring of integers R, consider the Néron model of A, which is a 'best possible' model of A defined over R. This model may be represented as a scheme over

Spec(R)

(cf. spectrum of a ring) for which the generic fibre constructed by means of the morphism

Spec(F) → Spec(R)

gives back A. Let A0 denote the open subgroup scheme of the Néron model whose fibres are the connected components. For a maximal ideal P of R with residue field k, A0k is a group variety over k, hence an extension of an abelian variety by a linear group. This linear group is an extension of a torus by a unipotent group. Let uP be the dimension of the unipotent group and tP the dimension of the torus. The order of the conductor at P is

 

where   is a measure of wild ramification. When F is a number field, the conductor ideal of A is given by

 

Properties

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  • A has good reduction at P if and only if   (which implies  ).
  • A has semistable reduction if and only if   (then again  ).
  • If A acquires semistable reduction over a Galois extension of F of degree prime to p, the residue characteristic at P, then δP = 0.
  • If  , where d is the dimension of A, then  .
  • If   and F is a finite extension of   of ramification degree  , there is an upper bound expressed in terms of the function  , which is defined as follows:
Write   with   and set  . Then[1]
 
Further, for every   with   there is a field   with   and an abelian variety   of dimension   so that   is an equality.

References

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  1. ^ Brumer, Armand; Kramer, Kenneth (1994). "The conductor of an abelian variety". Compositio Math. 92 (2): 227-248.