English

Computing the Cassels-Tate pairing on the 2-Selmer group of a genus 2 Jacobian

Number Theory 2023-06-12 v1

Abstract

We describe a method for computing the Cassels-Tate pairing on the 2-Selmer group of the Jacobian of a genus 2 curve. This can be used to improve the upper bound coming from 2-descent for the rank of the group of rational points on the Jacobian. Our method remains practical regardless of the Galois action on the Weierstrass points of the genus 2 curve. It does however depend on being able to find a rational point on a certain twisted Kummer surface. The latter does not appear to be a severe restriction in practice. In particular, we have used our method to unconditionally determine the ranks of all genus 2 Jacobians in the L-functions and modular forms database (LMFDB).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.06011,
  title  = {Computing the Cassels-Tate pairing on the 2-Selmer group of a genus 2 Jacobian},
  author = {Tom Fisher and Jiali Yan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.06011},
  year   = {2023}
}

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48 pages