K. Hulek and G. K. Sankaran

The moduli space of principally polarised abelian 4-folds can be compactified in several different ways by toroidal methods. Here we consider in detail the Igusa compactification and the (second) Voronoi compactification. We describe in both cases the cone of nef Cartier divisors. The proof depends on a detailed description of the Voronoi compactification, which makes it possible to proceed by induction, using the known description of the nef cone for compactifications of ${\mathcal A}_3$. The Igusa compactification has a non-${\mathbb Q}$-factorial singularity, which is resolved by a single blow-up: this resolution is the Voronoi compactification. The exceptional divisor $E$ is a toric Fano variety (of dimension 9): the other boundary divisor, $D$, corresponds to degenerations with corank~1. After imposing a level structure in order to avoid certain technical complications, we show that the closure of $D$ in the Voronoi compactification maps to the Voronoi compactification of ${\mathcal A}_3$. The toric description of the exceptional divisor allows us to describe the map in sufficient detail to estimate the intersection numbers needed. This inductive process is only valid for the Voronoi compactification: the result for the Igusa compactification is deduced from the Voronoi compactification.

2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: 14K10, 14E99, 14M25.

Keywords: Siegel modular varieties, nef divisors.

E-mail:
gks@maths.bath.ac.uk