On Mordell-Weil groups of Jacobians over function fields

We study the arithmetic of abelian varieties over $K=k(t)$ where $k$ is an arbitrary field. The main result relates Mordell-Weil groups of certain Jacobians over $K$ to homomorphisms of other Jacobians over $k$. Our methods also yield completely explicit points on elliptic curves with unbounded rank over $\Fpbar(t)$ and a new construction of elliptic curves with moderately high rank over $\C(t)$.