On compatibility between isogenies and polarisations of abelian varieties

Abstract

We discuss the notion of polarised isogenies of abelian varieties, that is, isogenies which are compatible with given principal polarisations. This is motivated by problems of unlikely intersections in Shimura varieties. Our aim is to show that certain questions about polarised isogenies can be reduced to questions about unpolarised isogenies or vice versa. Our main theorem concerns abelian varieties B which are isogenous to a fixed abelian variety A. It establishes the existence of a polarised isogeny A to B whose degree is polynomially bounded in n, if there exist both an unpolarised isogeny A to B of degree n and a polarised isogeny A to B of unknown degree. As a further result, we prove that given any two principally polarised abelian varieties related by an unpolarised isogeny, there exists a polarised isogeny between their fourth powers. The proofs of both theorems involve calculations in the endomorphism algebras of the abelian varieties, using the Albert classification of these endomorphism algebras and the classification of Hermitian forms over division algebras