The Geometric Dynamical Northcott and Bogomolov Properties

Abstract

We establish the dynamical Northcott property for polarized endomorphisms of a projective variety over a function field $\mathbf{K}$ of characteristic zero, and we relate this property to the notion of stability in complex dynamics. This extends previous results of Benedetto, Baker and DeMarco in dimension $1$, and of Chatzidakis-Hrushovski in higher dimension. Our proof uses complex dynamics arguments and does not rely on the previous ones. We first show that, when $\mathbf{K}$ is the field of rational functions of a normal complex projective variety, the canonical height of a subvariety is the mass of an appropriate bifurcation current and that a marked point is stable if and only if its canonical height is zero. We then establish the geometric dynamical Northcott property characterizing points of height zero in this setting, using a similarity argument. Moving from points to subvarieties, we propose, for polarized endomorphisms, a dynamical version of the geometric Bogomolov conjecture, recently proved by Cantat, Gao, Habegger, and Xie in the original setting of abelian varieties.