Lengths of Periods and Seshadri Constants of Abelian Varieties

Abstract

The purpose of this note is to point out an elementary but somewhat surprising connection between the work of Buser and Sarnak on lengths of periods of abelian varieties and the Seshadri constants measuring the local positivity of theta divisors. The link is established via symplectic blowing up, in the spirit of McDuff and Polterovich. As an application of the main inequality, we get a simple new proof of a statement of Buser-Sarnak type to the effect that the Jacobian of a curve has a period of unusually small length. We also deduce a lower bound on the Seshadri constant of a very general p.p.a.v. which differs from the maximum possible by a factor of less than four.