Relative Manin–Mumford in additive extensions

Abstract

In recent papers Masser and Zannier have proved various results of “relative Manin–Mumford” type for various families of abelian varieties, some with field of definition restricted to the algebraic numbers. Typically these imply the finiteness of the set of torsion points on a curve in the family. After Bertrand, Masser, and Zannier discovered some surprising counterexamples for multiplicative extensions of elliptic families, the three authors together with Pillay settled completely the situation for this case over the algebraic numbers. Here we treat the last remaining case of surfaces, that of additive extensions of elliptic families, and even over the field of all complex numbers. In particular analogous counterexamples do not exist. There are finiteness consequences for Pell’s equation over polynomial rings and integration in elementary terms. Our work can be made effective (as opposed to most of that preceding), mainly because we use counting results only for analytic curves.