On the Oort conjecture for Shimura varieties of unitary and orthogonal types

Abstract

In this paper we study the Oort conjecture concerning the non-existence of Shimura subvarieties contained generically in the Torelli locus in the Siegel modular variety${\mathcal{A}}_{g}$. Using the poly-stability of Higgs bundles on curves and the slope inequality of Xiao on fibered surfaces, we show that a Shimura curve$C$is not contained generically in the Torelli locus if its canonical Higgs bundle contains a unitary Higgs subbundle of rank at least$(4g+2)/5$. From this we prove that a Shimura subvariety of$\mathbf{SU}(n,1)$type is not contained generically in the Torelli locus when a numerical inequality holds, which involves the genus$g$, the dimension$n+1$, the degree$2d$of CM field of the Hermitian space, and the type of the symplectic representation defining the Shimura subdatum. A similar result holds for Shimura subvarieties of$\mathbf{SO}(n,2)$type, defined by spin groups associated to quadratic spaces over a totally real number field of degree at least$6$subject to some natural constraints of signatures.