Experiments with Ceresa classes of cyclic Fermat quotients

Abstract

We give two new examples of non-hyperelliptic curves whose Ceresa cycles have torsion images in the intermediate Jacobian. For one of them, the central value of the $L$-function of the relevant motive is non-vanishing and the Ceresa cycle is torsion in the Griffiths group, consistent with the conjectures of Beilinson and Bloch. We speculate on a possible explanation for the existence of these torsion Ceresa classes, based on some computations with cyclic Fermat quotients.