Anomalous Subvarieties—Structure Theorems and Applications

Abstract

When a fixed algebraic variety in a multiplicative group variety is intersected with the union of all algebraic subgroups of fixed dimension, a key role is played by what we call the anomalous subvarieties. These arise when the algebraic variety meets translates of subgroups in sets larger than expected. We prove a Structure Theorem for the anomalous subvarieties, and we give some applications, emphasizing in particular the case of codimension two. We also state some related conjectures about the boundedness of absolute height on such intersections as well as their finiteness.