We consider projective bundles (or Brauer-Severi varieties) over an abelian variety which are homogeneous, i.e., invariant under translation. We describe the structure of these bundles in terms of projective representations of commutative group schemes; the irreducible bundles correspond to Heisenberg groups and their standard representations. Our results extend those of Mukai on semi-homogeneous vector bundles, and yield a geometric view of the Brauer group of abelian varieties.
IntroductionThe main objects of this article are the projective bundles (or Brauer-Severi varieties) over an abelian variety X which are homogeneous, i.e., isomorphic to their pull-backs under all translations. Among these bundles, the projectivizations of vector bundles are well understood by work of Mukai (see [22]). Indeed, the vector bundles with homogeneous projectivization are exactly the semi-homogeneous vector bundles of [loc. cit.]. Those that are simple (i.e., their global endomorphisms are just scalars) admit several remarkable characterizations; for example, they are all obtained as direct images of line bundles under isogenies. Moreover, every indecomposable semi-homogeneous vector bundle is the tensor product of a unipotent bundle and of a simple semi-homogeneous bundle.In this article, we obtain somewhat similar statements for the structure of homogeneous projective bundles. We build on the results of our earlier paper [9] about homogeneous principal bundles under an arbitrary algebraic group; here we consider of course the projective linear group PGL n . In loose terms, the approach of [loc. cit.] reduces the classification of homogeneous bundles to that of commutative subgroup schemes of PGL n . The latter, carried out in Section 2, is based on the classical construction of Heisenberg groups and their irreducible representations.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary 14K05; Secondary 14F22, 14J60, 14L30.
1In Section 3, we introduce a notion of irreducibility for homogeneous projective bundles, which is equivalent to the group scheme of bundle automorphisms being finite. (The projectivization of a semi-homogeneous vector bundle E is irreducible if and only if E is simple). We characterize those projective bundles that are homogeneous and irreducible, by the vanishing of all the cohomology groups of their adjoint vector bundle (Proposition 3.7). Also, we show that the homogeneous irreducible bundles are classified by the pairs (H, e), where H is a finite subgroup of the dual abelian variety, and e : H × H → G m a non-degenerate alternating bilinear pairing (Proposition 3.1). Finally, we obtain a characterization of those homogeneous projective bundles that are projectivizations of vector bundles, first in the irreducible case (Proposition 3.10; it states in loose terms that the pairing e originates from a line bundle on X) and then in the general case (Theorem 3.11).The irreducible homogeneous projective bundles over an elliptic curve are exactly the projectivizations of indecomposable vector bundles wi...