Let be an abelian variety, let be the dual abelian variety, and for , let be the translation-by- map, . Then each divisor on defines a map via . The map is a polarisation if is ample. The Rosati involution of relative to the polarisation sends a map to the map , where is the dual map induced by the action of on .
Let denote the Néron–Severi group of . The polarisation also induces an inclusion :\mathrm {NS} (A)\otimes \mathbb {Q} \to \mathrm {End} (A)\otimes \mathbb {Q} }
via . The image of is equal to :\psi '=\psi \}}
, i.e., the set of endomorphisms fixed by the Rosati involution. The operation then gives the structure of a formally real Jordan algebra.