Around the Zilber-Pink Conjecture for Shimura Varieties

In this thesis, we study some arithmetic and geometric problems for Shimura varieties. This thesis consists of three parts. In the first part, we study some applications of model theory to number theory. In 2014, Pila and Tsimerman gave a proof of the Ax-Schanuel conjecture for the j-function and, with Mok, have recently announced a proof of its generalization to any (pure) Shimura variety. We refer to this generalization as the hyperbolic Ax-Schanuel conjecture. In this article, we show that the hyperbolic Ax-Schanuel conjecture can be used to reduce the Zilber-Pink conjecture for Shimura varieties to a problem of point counting. We further show that this point counting problem can be tackled in a number of cases using the Pila-Wilkie counting theorem and several arithmetic conjectures. Our methods are inspired by previous applications of the Pila-Zannier method and, in particular, the recent proof by Habegger and Pila of the Zilber-Pink conjecture for curves in abelian varieties. This is joint work with Christopher Daw. The second part is devoted to a Galois cohomological result towards the proof of the Zilber-Pink conjecture. Let G be a linear algebraic group over a field k of characteristic 0. We show that any two connected semisimple k-subgroups of G that are conjugate over an algebraic closure of kare actually conjugate over a finite field extension of k of degree bounded independently of the subgroups. Moreover, if k is a real number field, we show that any two connected semisimple k-subgroups of G that are conjugate over the field of real numbers ℝ are actually conjugate over a finite real extension of k of degree bounded independently of the subgroups. This is joint work with Mikhail Borovoi and Christopher Daw. Finally, in the third part, we consider the distribution of compact Shimura varieties. We recall that a Shimura variety S of dimension 1 is always compact unless S is a modular curve. We generalize this observation by defining a height function in the space of Shimura varieties attached to a fixed real reductive group. In the case of unitary groups, we prove that the density of non-compact Shimura varieties is zero.