Construction of Hecke Characters for Three-dimensional CM Abelian Varieties

Abstract

It is well-known for an elliptic curve with complex multiplication that the existence of a $\mathbb{Q}$-rational model is equivalent to its field of moduli being equal to $\mathbb{Q}$, or its endomorphism ring being the ring of integers of 9 possible fields ($\ast$). Murabayashi and Umegaki proved analogous results for abelian surfaces. For three dimensional CM abelian varieties with rational fields of moduli, Chun narrowed down to a list of 37 possible CM fields. In this paper, we show that his list is exact. By constructing certain Hecke characters that satisfy a theorem of Shimura, we prove that precisely 28 isogeny classes of these abelian varieties have $\mathbb{Q}$-models. Therefore the complete analogy to $(\ast)$ fails here.