Abelian varieties with no power isogenous to a Jacobian

Abstract

For a curve of genus at least four which is either very general or very general hyperelliptic, we classify all ways in which a power of its Jacobian can be isogenous to a product of Jacobians of curves. As an application, we show that, for a very general principally polarized abelian variety of dimension at least four, or the intermediate Jacobian of a very general cubic threefold, no power is isogenous to a product of Jacobians of curves. This confirms some cases of the Coleman-Oort conjecture. We further deduce from our results some progress on the question whether the integral Hodge conjecture fails for such abelian varieties.