Characterization of products of theta divisors

Abstract

We study products of irreducible theta divisors from two points of view. On the one hand, we characterize them as normal subvarieties of abelian varieties such that a desingularization has holomorphic Euler characteristic 1. On the other hand, we identify them up to birational equivalence among all varieties of maximal Albanese dimension. We also describe the structure of maximal Albanese dimension varieties X with holomorphic Euler characteristic 1 and irregularity 2dim X-1.