Unlikely intersections in families of abelian varieties and the polynomial Pell equation

Abstract

Let S be a smooth irreducible curve defined over a number field k and consider an abelian scheme A over S and a curve C inside A, both defined over k. In previous works, we proved that when A is a fibered product of elliptic schemes, if C is not contained in a proper subgroup scheme of A, then it contains at most finitely many points that belong to a flat subgroup scheme of codimension at least 2. In this article, we continue our investigation and settle the crucial case of powers of simple abelian schemes of relative dimension g bigger or equal than 2. This, combined with the above mentioned result and work by Habegger and Pila, gives the statement for general abelian schemes. These results have applications in the study of solvability of almost-Pell equations in polynomials.