Local heuristics and an exact formula for abelian surfaces over finite fields

Abstract

Consider a quartic $q$-Weil polynomial $f$. Motivated by equidistribution considerations we define, for each prime $\ell$, a local factor which measures the relative frequency with which $f\bmod \ell$ occurs as the characteristic polynomial of a symplectic similitude over $\mathbb{F}_\ell$. For a certain class of polynomials, we show that the resulting infinite product calculates the number of principally polarized abelian surfaces over $\mathbb{F}_q$ with Weil polynomial $f$.