On the Manin-Mumford and Mordell-Lang conjectures in positive characteristic

Abstract

We prove that in positive characteristic, the Manin-Mumford conjecture implies the Mordell-Lang conjecture, in the situation where the ambient variety is an abelian variety defined over the function field of a smooth curve over a finite field and the relevant group is a finitely generated group. In particular, in the setting of the last sentence, we provide a proof of the Mordell-Lang conjecture, which does not depend on tools coming from model theory.