English

The proportion of genus one curves over $\mathbb{Q}$ defined by a binary quartic that everywhere locally have a point

Number Theory 2020-08-03 v3

Abstract

We consider the proportion of genus one curves over Q\mathbb{Q} of the form z2=f(x,y)z^2=f(x,y) where f(x,y)Z[x,y]f(x,y)\in\mathbb{Z}[x,y] is a binary quartic form (or more generally of the form z2+h(x,y)z=f(x,y)z^2+h(x,y)z=f(x,y) where also h(x,y)Z[x,y]h(x,y)\in\mathbb{Z}[x,y] is a binary quadratic form) that have points everywhere locally. We show that the proportion of these curves that are locally soluble, computed as a product of local densities, is approximately 75.96%. We prove that the local density at a prime pp is given by a fixed degree-99 rational function of pp for all odd pp (and for the generalised equation, the same rational function gives the local density at every prime). An additional analysis is carried out to estimate rigorously the local density at the real place.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.12085,
  title  = {The proportion of genus one curves over $\mathbb{Q}$ defined by a binary quartic that everywhere locally have a point},
  author = {Manjul Bhargava and John Cremona and Tom Fisher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.12085},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

19 pages. To appear in IJNT