Unique factorization of principally polarized abelian varieties

Bruce W. Jordan, Allan G. Keeton, Bjorn Poonen

Published 2016-02-22Version 1

Shimura proved that each principally polarized abelian variety over $\mathbf{C}$ admits a unique factorization into irreducible principally polarized abelian varieties. We give an exposition of his result, and generalize to an arbitrary ground field $k$. If $k$ is separably closed, the irreducible factors are in bijection with the irreducible components of a theta divisor over $k$ giving rise to the polarization.