English

Local and global densities for Weierstrass models of elliptic curves

Number Theory 2021-10-19 v3

Abstract

We prove local results on the pp-adic density of elliptic curves over Qp\mathbb{Q}_p with different reduction types, together with global results on densities of elliptic curves over Q\mathbb{Q} with specified reduction types at one or more (including infinitely many) primes. These global results include: the density of integral Weierstrass equations which are minimal models of semistable elliptic curves over Q\mathbb{Q} (that is, elliptic curves with square-free conductor) is 1/ζ(2)60.79%1/\zeta(2)\approx60.79\%, the same as the density of square-free integers; the density of semistable elliptic curves over Q\mathbb{Q} is ζ(10)/ζ(2)60.85%\zeta(10)/\zeta(2)\approx60.85\%; the density of integral Weierstrass equations which have square-free discriminant is p(12p2+1p3)42.89%\prod_p\left(1-\frac{2}{p^2}+\frac{1}{p^3}\right) \approx 42.89\%, which is the same (except for a different factor at the prime 22) as the density of monic integral cubic polynomials with square-free discriminant (and agrees with a previous result of Baier and Browning for short Weierstrass equations); and the density of elliptic curves over Q\mathbb{Q} with square-free minimal discriminant is ζ(10)p(12p2+1p3)42.93%\zeta(10)\prod_p\left(1-\frac{2}{p^2}+\frac{1}{p^3}\right)\approx42.93\%. The local results derive from a detailed analysis of Tate's Algorithm, while the global ones are obtained through the use of the Ekedahl Sieve, as developed by Poonen, Stoll, and Bhargava.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.08454,
  title  = {Local and global densities for Weierstrass models of elliptic curves},
  author = {J. E. Cremona and M. Sadek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.08454},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

32 pages. Revised with minor corrections after refereeing; now includes SageMath Jupyter notebooks to verify some algebraic computations