Related papers: Some cases of Oort's conjecture about Newton polyg…
There are open questions about which Newton polygons and Ekedahl-Oort types occur for Jacobians of smooth curves of genus $g$ in positive characteristic $p$. In this chapter, I survey the current state of knowledge about these questions. I…
We show that every component of the locus of smooth supersingular curves of genus $4$ in characteristic $p>2$ has a trivial generic automorphism group. As a result, we prove Oort's conjecture about automorphism groups of supersingular…
We survey results and open questions about the $p$-ranks and Newton polygons of Jacobians of curves in positive characteristic $p$. We prove some geometric results about the $p$-rank stratification of the moduli space of (hyperelliptic)…
By a result of Moonen, there are exactly 20 positive-dimensional families of cyclic covers of the projective line for which the Torelli image is open and dense in the associated Shimura variety. For each of these, we compute the Newton…
Let $p$ be an odd prime. What are the possible Newton polygons for a curve in characteristic $p$? Equivalently, which Newton strata intersect the Torelli locus in $\mathcal{A}_g$? In this note, we study the Newton polygons of certain curves…
We review the Shimura-Taniyama method for computing the Newton polygon of an abelian variety with complex multiplication. We apply this method to cyclic covers of the projective line branched at three points. As an application, we produce…
For a prime $p$ congruent to three modulo four, we prove that there exists a smooth curve of genus five in characteristic $p$ that is supersingular. We produce this curve as an unramified double cover of a curve of genus three. We…
A curve over a perfect field $K$ of characteristic $p > 0$ is said to be superspecial if its Jacobian is isomorphic to a product of supersingular elliptic curves over the algebraic closure $\overline{K}$. In recent years, isomorphism…
We establish the existence of hyperelliptic curves of genus $g\ge 2$ defined over $\mathbb{Q}$ whose Jacobians possess rational torsion points of order $N$ where $N=4g^2+2g-2$ or $4g^2+ 2g -4$. For $N=2g^2+7g+1$, we introduce a…
In this paper, we study the Newton polygons and Ekedahl-Oort types of reductions of abelian covers of the projective line branched at three points modulo a prime. We study the natural density of primes where these covers give supersingular…
Superspecial curves are important objects in number theory and algebraic geometry, and the existence in genus $g \geq 4$ remains an open problem for all but finitely many characteristics $p > 0$. As a computational approach to this problem,…
We prove that there exists a supersingular nonsingular curve of genus $4$ in arbitrary characteristic $p$. For $p>3$ we shall prove that the desingularization of a certain fiber product over $\mathbb{P}^1$ of two supersingular elliptic…
We describe the intersection of the Torelli locus $j(\mathcal{M}_4^{ct}) = \mathcal{J}_4$ with Newton and Ekedahl-Oort strata related to the supersingular locus in characteristic two. We show that the locus of supersingular Jacobians…
Let $\mathcal{A}_g$ be the moduli space over $\overline{\mathbb{F}}_p$ of $g$-dimensional principally polarised abelian varieties, where $p$ is a prime. We show that if $g$ is even and $p\geq 5$, then every geometric generic member in the…
Given an integer $\gamma\geq 2$ and an odd prime power $q$ we show that for every large genus $g$ there exists a non-singular curve $C$ defined over $\mathbb{F}_q$ of genus $g$ and gonality $\gamma$ and with exactly $\gamma(q+1)$…
For every odd prime number p, we give examples of non-constant smooth families of genus 2 curves over fields of characteristic p which have pro-Galois (pro-\'etale) covers of infinite degree with geometrically connected fibers. The…
Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a smooth, projective, genus $g\geq 2$ curve, defined over $\mathbb{C}$. Then $\mathcal{C}$ has \emph{many automorphisms} if its corresponding moduli point $p \in \mathcal{M}_g$ has a neighborhood $U$ in the complex…
We show that for all odd primes $p$, there exist ordinary elliptic curves over $\bar{\mathbb{F}}_p(x)$ with arbitrarily high rank and constant $j$-invariant. This shows in particular that there are elliptic curves with arbitrarily high rank…
Given a family of abelian covers of $\mathbb{P}^1$ and a prime $p$ of good reduction, by considering the associated Deligne--Mostow Shimura variety, we obtain lower bounds for the Ekedahl-Oort type, and the Newton polygon, at $p$ of the…
Consider the locus of smooth curves of genus g and p-rank f defined over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic p. It is an open problem to classify which group schemes occur as the p-torsion of the Jacobians of these curves for…