A note on dual abelian varieties

Abstract

For any non-principal polarisation $D$, we explicitly construct $D$-polarised abelian variety $A$, such that its dual abelian variety is not (abstractly) isomorphic to $A$. For $\dim(A)>3$ the construction includes examples with submaximal Picard number equal to $(\dim(A)-1)^2+1$. As a corollary, we show that a very general non-principally polarised abelian variety is not isomorphic to its dual. Moreover, we show an example of an abelian variety that is isomorphic to its dual, yet it does not admit a principal polarisation.