English

Quadratic twists of elliptic curves and class numbers

Number Theory 2020-06-30 v2

Abstract

For positive rank rr elliptic curves E(Q)E(\mathbb{Q}), we employ ideal class pairings E(Q)×ED(Q)CL(D), E(\mathbb{Q})\times E_{-D}(\mathbb{Q}) \rightarrow \mathrm{CL}(-D), for quadratic twists ED(Q)E_{-D}(\mathbb{Q}) with a suitable ``small yy-height'' rational point, to obtain effective class number lower bounds. For the curves E(a): y2=x3a,E^{(a)}: \ y^2=x^3-a, with rank r(a),r(a), this gives h(D)110Etor(Q)RQ(E)Γ(r(a)2+1)(4π)r(a)2log(D)r(a)2loglogD, h(-D) \geq \frac{1}{10}\cdot \frac{|E_{\mathrm{tor}}(\mathbb{Q})|}{\sqrt{R_{\mathbb{Q}}(E)}}\cdot \frac{\Gamma\left (\frac{r(a)}{2}+1\right)}{(4\pi)^{\frac{r(a)}{2}}} \cdot \frac{\log(D)^{\frac{r(a)}{2}}}{\log \log D}, representing an improvement to the classical lower bound of Goldfeld, Gross and Zagier when r(a)3r(a)\geq 3. We prove that the number of twists ED(a)(Q)E_{-D}^{(a)}(\mathbb{Q}) with such a point (resp. with such a point and rank 2\geq 2 under the Parity Conjecture) is a,εX12ε.\gg_{a,\varepsilon} X^{\frac{1}{2}-\varepsilon}. We give infinitely many cases where r(a)6r(a)\geq 6. These results can be viewed as an analogue of the classical estimate of Gouv\^ea and Mazur for the number of rank 2\geq 2 quadratic twists, where in addition we obtain ``log-power'' improvements to the Goldfeld-Gross-Zagier class number lower bound.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.01063,
  title  = {Quadratic twists of elliptic curves and class numbers},
  author = {Michael Griffin and Ken Ono and Wei-Lun Tsai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.01063},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

We correct minor typographical errors, including the formula in the abstract and equation (1.3)