Families of abelian varieties and large Galois images

Abstract: Associated to an abelian variety $A$ of dimension $g$ over a number field $K$ is a Galois representation $\rho_A\colon Gal(\bar{K}/K)\to GL_{2g}(\hat{\mathbb{Z}})$. The representation $\rho_A$ encodes the Galois action on the torsion points of $A$ and its image is an interesting invariant of $A$ that contains a lot of arithmetic information. We consider abelian varieties over $K$ parametrized by the $K$-points of a nonempty open subvariety $U\subseteq \mathbb{P}^n_K$. We show that away from a set of density $0$, the image of $\rho_A$ will be very large; more precisely, it will have uniformly bounded index in a group obtained from the family of abelian varieties. This generalizes earlier results which assumed that the family of abelian varieties have "big monodromy". We also give a version for a family of abelian varieties with a more general base.