On the Chow ring of very general abelian varieties and a question of Pirola

Abstract

We prove that for a very general abelian variety of dimension $\geq 4$, a divisor $D\in {\rm CH}^1(A)$ that satisfies $D^2=0$ in ${\rm CH}^2(A)$ is of torsion. The same result is also established for a very general Jacobian in genus $4$. We use then the second statement in order to prove a conjecture of Pirola, which states that any rational section of the Kummer fibration $K=J/\pm {\rm Id}\rightarrow \mathcal{M}_4$, where $J\rightarrow \mathcal{M}_4 $ is the Jacobian fibration, must be a multiple of the Griffiths-Pirola section given by the difference of the two trigonal divisors.