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 that does not depend on tools coming from model theory.