AbstractLet denote the Fermat curve over ℚ of prime exponent ℓ. The Jacobian Jac() of splits over ℚ as the product of Jacobians Jac(k), 1 ≤ k ≤ ℓ −2, where k are curves obtained as quotients of by certain subgroups of automorphisms of . It is well known that Jac(k) is the power of an absolutely simple abelian variety Bk with complex multiplication. We call degenerate those pairs (ℓ, k) for which Bk has degenerate CM type. For a non-degenerate pair (ℓ, k), we compute the Sato–Tate group of Jac(Ck), prove the generalized Sato–Tate Conjecture for it, and give an explicit method to compute the moments and measures of the involved distributions. Regardless of whether (ℓ, k) is degenerate, we also obtain Frobenius equidistribution results for primes of certain residue degrees in the ℓ-th cyclotomic field. Key to our results is a detailed study of the rank of certain generalized Demjanenko matrices.
The Eisenstein ideal of a Fermat curve