Arithmetic statistics of Prym surfaces

Abstract

We consider a family of abelian surfaces over mathbb {Q} arising as Prym varieties of double covers of genus-1 curves by genus-3 curves. These abelian surfaces carry a polarization of type (1, 2) and we show that the average size of the Selmer group of this polarization equals 3. Moreover we show that the average size of the 2-Selmer group of the abelian surfaces in the same family is bounded above by 5. This implies an upper bound on the average rank of these Prym varieties, and gives evidence for the heuristics of Poonen and Rains for a family of abelian varieties which are not principally polarized. The proof is a combination of an analysis of the Lie algebra embedding F_4subset E_6, invariant theory, a classical geometric construction due to Pantazis, a study of Néron component groups of Prym surfaces and Bhargava’s orbit-counting techniques.