English

Modular curves of prime-power level with infinitely many quadratic points

Number Theory 2026-02-25 v2

Abstract

We completely determine the 10851085 open subgroups HH of GL2(Z^)\operatorname{GL}_2(\widehat{\mathbb{Z}}) of prime-power level that satisfy IH-I \in H and det(H)=Z^×\operatorname{det}(H)=\widehat{\mathbb{Z}}^{\times} for which the corresponding modular curve XHX_H has infinitely many quadratic points. When g(XH)2g(X_H)\geq 2 this is equivalent to determining all the hyperelliptic modular curves of prime-power level and all the bielliptic modular curves of prime-power level that admit a degree two map to a positive rank elliptic curve. From the moduli perspective, this means that there are exactly 1085 subgroups HH of GL2(Z^)\operatorname{GL}_2(\widehat{\mathbb{Z}}) of prime-power level for which there are infinitely many elliptic curves E/KE/K over quadratic extensions such that ρE(Gk)\rho_E(G_k) is conjugate to a subgroup of HH.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.22895,
  title  = {Modular curves of prime-power level with infinitely many quadratic points},
  author = {Michael Cerchia and Rakvi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.22895},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages. Exposition changed after referee report. Comments welcome