In this paper we study the Coleman-Oort conjecture for superelliptic curves, i.e., curves defined by affine equations $y^n=F(x)$ with $F$ a separable polynomial. We prove that up to isomorphism there are at most finitely many superelliptic curves of fixed genus $ggeq 8$ with CM Jacobians. The proof relies on the geometric structures of Shimura subvarieties in Siegel modular varieties and the stability properties of Higgs bundles associated to fibred surfaces.
Let $K$ be a field of characteristic different from $2$, $bar{K}$ its algebraic closure. Let $n ge 3$ be an odd prime such that $2$ is a primitive root modulo $n$. Let $f(x)$ and $h(x)$ be degree $n$ polynomials with coefficients in $K$ and without repeated roots. Let us consider genus $(n-1)/2$ hyperelliptic curves $C_f: y^2=f(x)$ and $C_h: y^2=h(x)$, and their jacobians $J(C_f)$ and $J(C_h)$, which are $(n-1)/2$-dimensional abelian varieties defined over $K$. Suppose that one of the polynomials is irreducible and the other reducible. We prove that if $J(C_f)$ and $J(C_h)$ are isogenous over $bar{K}$ then both jacobians are abelian varieties of CM type with multiplication by the field of $n$th roots of $1$.
In this article, we show that in each of four standard families of hyperelliptic curves, there is a density-$1$ subset of members with the property that their Jacobians have adelic Galois representation with image as large as possible. This result constitutes an explicit application of a general theorem on arbitrary rational families of abelian varieties to the case of families of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves. Furthermore, we provide explicit examples of hyperelliptic curves of genus $2$ and $3$ over $mathbb Q$ whose Jacobians have such maximal adelic Galois representations.
By constructing suitable Borcherds forms on Shimura curves and using Schofers formula for norms of values of Borcherds forms at CM-points, we determine all the equations of hyperelliptic Shimura curves $X_0^D(N)$. As a byproduct, we also address the problem of whether a modular form on Shimura curves $X_0^D(N)/W_{D,N}$ with a divisor supported on CM-divisors can be realized as a Borcherds form, where $X_0^D(N)/W_{D,N}$ denotes the quotient of $X_0^D(N)$ by all the Atkin-Lehner involutions. The construction of Borcherds forms is done by solving certain integer programming problems.
We give an explicit description of the stable reduction of superelliptic curves of the form $y^n=f(x)$ at primes $p$ whose residue characteristic is prime to the exponent $n$. We then use this description to compute the local $L$-factor of the curve and the exponent of conductor at $p$.
We discuss the computation of coefficients of the L-series associated to a hyperelliptic curve over Q of genus at most 3, using point counting, generic group algorithms, and p-adic methods.