Book Description

This thesis is comprised of three logically independent parts. As the title suggests, each part is related to vector bundles on abelian varieties. We first use Brill-Noether theory to study the geometry of a general curve in its canonical embedding. We prove that there is no $g$ for which the canonical embedding of a general curve of genus $g$ lies on the Segre embedding of any product of three or more projective spaces. We then consider non-degenerate line bundles on abelian varieties. Central to our work is Mumford's index theorem. We give an interpretation of this theorem, and then prove that non-degenerate line bundles, with nonzero index, exhibit positivity analogous to ample line bundles. As an application, we determine the asymptotic behaviour of families of cup-product maps. Using this result, we prove that vector bundles, which are associated to these families, are asymptotically globally generated. To illustrate our results, we consider explicit examples. We also prove that simple abelian varieties, for which our results apply in all possible instances, exist. This is achieved by considering a particular class of abelian varieties with real multiplication. The final part of this thesis concerns the theory of theta and adelic theta groups. We extend and refine work of Mumford, Umemura, and Mukai. For example, we determine the structure and representation theory of theta groups associated to a class of vector bundles which we call simple semi-homogeneous vector bundles of separable type. We also construct, and clarify functorial properties enjoyed by, adelic theta groups associated to line bundles.