Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2003
Let $X$ and $Y$ be affine nonsingular real algebraic varieties. A general problem in real algebraic geometry is to try to decide when a continuous map $f : X \rightarrow Y$ can be approximated by regular maps in the space of ${\cal C}_0$ mappings from $X$ to $Y$ , equipped with the ${\cal C}_0$ topology. This paper solves this problem when $X$ is the connected component containing the origin of the real part of a complex Abelian variety and $Y$ is the standard 2-dimensional sphere.