Special points on products of modular curves

We prove the Andre-Oort conjecture on special points of Shimura varieties for arbitrary products of modular curves, assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis. More explicitly, this means the following. Let n be a positive integer, and let S be a subset of C^n (with C the complex numbers) consisting of points all of whose coordinates are j-invariants of elliptic curves with complex multiplications. Then we prove (under GRH) that the irreducible components of the Zariski closure of S are ``special subvarieties'', i.e., determined by isogeny conditions on coordinates and pairs of coordinates. A weaker variant is proved unconditionally.Comment: 21 pages, referee's remarks have been taken into account, some references updated, to appear in Duke Mathematical Journa

Pink's conjecture on unlikely intersections and families of semi-abelian varieties

The Poincar\'e torsor of a Shimura family of abelian varieties can be viewed both as a family of semi-abelian varieties and as a mixed Shimura variety. We show that the special subvarieties of the latter cannot all be described in terms of the group subschemes of the former. This provides a counter-example to the relative Manin-Mumford conjecture, but also some evidence in favour of Pink's conjecture on unlikely intersections in mixed Shimura varieties. The main part of the article concerns mixed Hodge structures and the uniformization of the Poincar\'e torsor, but other, more geometric, approaches are also discussed.Comment: Final version, only minor edits. Latex source of published version available on journal's websit