Nonvanishing of Hecke L-Functions for CM Fields and Ranks of Abelian Varieties

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In this paper we prove a nonvanishing theorem for central values of L-functions associated to a large class of algebraic Hecke characters of CM number fields. A key ingredient in the proof is an asymptotic formula for the average of these central values. We combine the nonvanishing theorem with work of Tian and Zhang [TiZ] to deduce that infinitely many of the CM abelian varieties associated to these Hecke characters have Mordell–Weil rank zero. Included among these abelian varieties are higher-dimensional analogues of the elliptic $${{\mathbb Q}}$$ -curves A(D) of B. Gross [Gr].