Matroids and the integral Hodge conjecture for abelian varieties

Abstract

We prove that the cohomology class of any curve on a very general principally polarized abelian variety of dimension at least 4 is an even multiple of the minimal class. The same holds for the intermediate Jacobian of a very general cubic threefold. This disproves the integral Hodge conjecture for abelian varieties and shows that very general cubic threefolds are not stably rational. Our proof is motivated by tropical geometry; it relies on multivariable Mumford constructions, monodromy considerations, and the combinatorial theory of matroids.