Transcendental Brauer groups of products of CM elliptic curves

Abstract

Let $L$ be a number field and let $E/L$ be an elliptic curve with complex multiplication by the ring of integers ${\mathcal{O}}_K$ of an imaginary quadratic field $K$. We use class field theory and results of Skorobogatov and Zarhin to compute the transcendental part of the Brauer group of the abelian surface $E\times E$. The results for the odd order torsion also apply to the Brauer group of the K3 surface $\text{Kum}(E\times E)$. We describe explicitly the elliptic curves $E/\mathbb{Q}$ with complex multiplication by ${\mathcal{O}}_K$ such that the Brauer group of $E\times E$ contains a transcendental element of odd order. We show that such an element gives rise to a Brauer-Manin obstruction to weak approximation on $\text{Kum}(E\times E)$, while there is no obstruction coming from the algebraic part of the Brauer group.

Corrigendum added as an appendix