Superspecial rank of supersingular abelian varieties and Jacobians

An abelian variety defined over an algebraically closed field k of positive characteristic is supersingular if it is isogenous to a product of supersingular elliptic curves and is superspecial if it is isomorphic to a product of supersingular elliptic curves. In this paper, the superspecial condition is generalized by defining the superspecial rank of an abelian variety, which is an invariant of its p-torsion. The main results in this paper are about the superspecial rank of supersingular abelian varieties and Jacobians of curves. For example, it turns out that the superspecial rank determines information about the decomposition of a supersingular abelian variety up to isomorphism; namely it is a bound for the maximal number of supersingular elliptic curves appearing in such a decomposition.Comment: V2: New coauthor, major rewrit

The a-number of hyperelliptic curves

It is known that for a smooth hyperelliptic curve to have a large $a$-number, the genus must be small relative to the characteristic of the field, $p>0$, over which the curve is defined. It was proven by Elkin that for a genus $g$ hyperelliptic curve $C$ to have $a_C=g-1$, the genus is bounded by $g<\frac{3p}{2}$. In this paper, we show that this bound can be lowered to $g <p$. The method of proof is to force the Cartier-Manin matrix to have rank one and examine what restrictions that places on the affine equation defining the hyperelliptic curve. We then use this bound to summarize what is known about the existence of such curves when $p=3,5$ and $7$.Comment: 7 pages. v2: revised and improved the proof of the main theorem based on suggestions from the referee. To appear in the proceedings volume of Women in Numbers Europe-