English

Computing the Mazur and Swinnerton-Dyer critical subgroup of elliptic curves

Number Theory 2015-01-20 v2

Abstract

Let EE be an optimal elliptic curve defined over Q\mathbb{Q}. The critical subgroup of EE is defined by Mazur and Swinnerton-Dyer as the subgroup of E(Q)E(\mathbb{Q}) generated by traces of branch points under a modular parametrization of EE. We prove that for all rank two elliptic curves with conductor smaller than 1000, the critical subgroup is torsion. First, we define a family of critical polynomials attached to EE and describe two algorithms to compute such polynomials. We then give a sufficient condition for the critical subgroup to be torsion in terms of the factorization of critical polynomials. Finally, a table of critical polynomials is obtained for all elliptic curves of rank two and conductor smaller than 1000, from which we deduce our result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1412.2827,
  title  = {Computing the Mazur and Swinnerton-Dyer critical subgroup of elliptic curves},
  author = {Hao Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.2827},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

fixed typos; added definition of degree of a rational function in section 2; deleted first remark after lemma 2.8