We prove that the $p^\infty$-torsion of the transcendental Brauer group of an abelian variety over a finitely generated field of characteristic $p>0$ is bounded. This answers a (variant of a) question asked by Skorobogatov and Zarhin for abelian varieties. To do this, we prove a ‘flat Tate conjecture’ for divisors. We also study other geometric Galois-invariant $p^\infty$-torsion classes of the Brauer group which are not in the transcendental Brauer group. These classes, in contrast with our main theorem, can be infinitely $p$-divisible. We explain how the existence of these $p$-divisible towers is naturally related to the failure of surjectivity of specialisation morphisms of Néron–Severi groups in characteristic $p$.

The main result of this paper concerns the positivity of the Hodge bundles of abelian varieties over global function fields. As applications, we obtain some partial results on the Tate–Shafarevich group and the Tate conjecture of surfaces over finite fields.

In this paper we prove a semistable version of the variational Tate conjecture for divisors in crystalline cohomology, showing that for $k$ a perfect field of characteristic $p$, a rational (logarithmic) line bundle on the special fibre of a semistable scheme over $k\unicode[STIX]{x27E6}t\unicode[STIX]{x27E7}$ lifts to the total space if and only if its first Chern class does. The proof is elementary, using standard properties of the logarithmic de Rham–Witt complex. As a corollary, we deduce similar algebraicity lifting results for cohomology classes on varieties over global function fields. Finally, we give a counter-example to show that the variational Tate conjecture for divisors cannot hold with $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$-coefficients.

Assuming the Tate conjecture and the computability of étale cohomology with finite coefficients, we give an algorithm that computes the Néron–Severi group of any smooth projective geometrically integral variety, and also the rank of the group of numerical equivalence classes of codimension $p$ cycles for any $p$.

We prove the Tate conjecture for codimension 2 cycles on an ordinary cubic fourfold over a finite field. The proof involves the construction of canonical coordinates on the formal deformation space via a crystalline period map.

A Lefschetz class on a smooth projective variety is an element of the Q-algebra generated by divisor classes. We show that it is possible to define Q-linear Tannakian categories of abelian motives using the Lefschetz classes as correspondences, and we compute the fundamental groups of the categories. As an application, we prove that the Hodge conjecture for complex abelian varieties of CM-type implies the Tate conjecture for all Abelian varieties over finite fields, thereby reducing the latter to a problem in complex analysis.