Fixed points and homology of superelliptic Jacobians

Let \(\eta : C_{f,N}\rightarrow \mathbb {P}^1\) be a cyclic cover of \(\mathbb {P}^1\) of degree \(N\) which is totally and tamely ramified for all the ramification points. We determine the group of fixed points of the cyclic covering group \({{\mathrm{Aut}}}(\eta )\simeq \mathbb {Z}/ N \mathbb {Z}\) acting on the Jacobian \(J_N:={{\mathrm{Jac}}}(C_{f,N})\) . For each prime \(\ell \) distinct from the characteristic of the base field, the Tate module \(T_\ell J_N\) is shown to be a free module over the ring \(\mathbb {Z}_\ell T]/(\sum _{i=0}^{N-1}T^i)\) . We also study the subvarieties of \(J_N\) and calculate the degree of the induced polarization on the new part \(J_N^\mathrm {new}\) of the Jacobian.