Specialization of canonical heights on abelian varieties

Abstract: Given a family of abelian varieties over a quasiprojective smooth curve $T^0$ over a global field and a point $P$ on the generic fiber, we show that the N\'eron-Tate canonical height $h_{X_t}(P_t)$ of $P_t$ along each fiber is exactly equal to a Weil height $h_{\overline M}(t)$ given by an adelic metrized line bundle $\overline M$ on the unique smooth projective curve $T$ containing $T^0$. As a consequence, we show that a conjecture of Zhang on the finiteness of small-height specializations of $P$ is equivalent to $\overline M$ being big.