The attractor conjecture for Calabi–Yau moduli spaces predicts the algebraicity of the moduli values of certain isolated points picked out by Hodge-theoretic conditions. Using tools from transcendence theory, we provide a family of counterexamples to the attractor conjecture in almost all odd dimensions conditional on a specific case of the Zilber–Pink conjecture in unlikely intersection theory; these Calabi–Yau manifolds were first studied by Dolgachev. We also give constructions of new families of Calabi–Yau varieties, analogous to the mirror quintic family, with all middle Hodge numbers equal to one, which would also give counterexamples to the attractor conjecture.

In 2014, Pila and Tsimerman gave a proof of the Ax–Schanuel conjecture for the$j$-function and, with Mok, have recently announced a proof of its generalization to any (pure) Shimura variety. We refer to this generalization as the hyperbolic Ax–Schanuel conjecture. In this article, we show that the hyperbolic Ax–Schanuel conjecture can be used to reduce the Zilber–Pink conjecture for Shimura varieties to a problem of point counting. We further show that this point counting problem can be tackled in a number of cases using the Pila–Wilkie counting theorem and several arithmetic conjectures. Our methods are inspired by previous applications of the Pila–Zannier method and, in particular, the recent proof by Habegger and Pila of the Zilber–Pink conjecture for curves in abelian varieties.

We show that Ribet sections are the only obstruction to the validity of the relative Manin–Mumford conjecture for one-dimensional families of semi-abelian surfaces. Applications include special cases of the Zilber–Pink conjecture for curves in a mixed Shimura variety of dimension 4, as well as the study of polynomial Pell equations with non-separable discriminants.

According to the André–Oort conjecture, an algebraic curve in Y (1)n that is not equal to a special subvariety contains only finitely many points which correspond to ann-tuple of elliptic curves with complex multiplication. Pink’s conjecture generalizes the André–Oort conjecture to the extent that if the curve is not contained in a special subvariety of positive codimension, then it is expected to meet the union of all special subvarieties of codimension two in only finitely many points. We prove this for a large class of curves in Y (1)n. When restricting to special subvarieties of codimension two that are not strongly special we obtain finiteness for all curves defined over . Finally, we formulate and prove a variant of the Mordell–Lang conjecture for subvarieties of Y (1)n.