Related papers: Serre's genus 50 example
We give a construction of singular curves with many rational points over finite fields. This construction enables us to prove some results on the maximum number of rational points on an absolutely irreducible projective algebraic curve…
We give new arguments that improve the known upper bounds on the maximal number N_q(g) of rational points of a curve of genus g over a finite field F_q for a number of pairs (q,g). Given a pair (q,g) and an integer N, we determine the…
We prove the existence of curves of genus $7$ and $12$ over the field with $11^5$ elements, reaching the Hasse-Weil-Serre upper bound. These curves are quotients of modular curves and we give explicit equations. We compute the number of…
In a previous paper, we proved that over a finite field $k$ of sufficiently large cardinality, all curves of genus at most 3 over k can be modeled by a bivariate Laurent polynomial that is nondegenerate with respect to its Newton polytope.…
The defect of a curve over a finite field is the difference between the number of rational points on the curve and the Weil-Serre upper bound for the number of points on the curve. We present algorithms for constructing curves of genus 5,…
We study a particular plane curve over a finite field whose normalization is of genus 0. The number of rational points of this curve achieves the Aubry-Perret bound for rational curves. The configuration of its rational points and a…
A maximal curve over a finite field $\mathbb F_q$ is a curve whose number of points reaches the upper Hasse-Weil-Serre bound. We define the discriminant of $\mathbb F_q$ as $d(\mathbb F_q):= \lfloor2\sqrt{q}\rfloor^2-4q$, which arises as…
Building on work by Chabauty from 1941, Coleman proved in 1985 an explicit bound for the number of rational points of a curve $C$ of genus $g\ge 2$ defined over a number field $F$, with Jacobian of rank at most $g-1$. Namely, in the case…
We complete the solution of the relative class number one problem for function fields of curves over finite fields. Using work from two earlier papers, this reduces to finding all function fields of genus 6 or 7 over $\mathbb{F}_2$ with one…
This is an extended version of an invited lecture I gave at the Journees Arithmetiques in St. Etienne in July 2009. We discuss the state of the art regarding the problem of finding the set of rational points on a (smooth projective)…
Faltings' theorem [Fal83],[Fal91] (formerly the Mordell conjecture [Mo22]) states that a curve of genus greater than one over any number field has only finitely many points. Again a natural question is how many points can such a curve have.…
We resolve a 1983 question of Serre by constructing curves with many points of every genus over every finite field. More precisely, we show that for every prime power q there is a positive constant c_q with the following property: for every…
We discuss methods for using the Weil polynomial of an isogeny class of abelian varieties over a finite field to determine properties of the curves (if any) whose Jacobians lie in the isogeny class. Some methods are strong enough to show…
In 1972, Serre showed that the adelic Galois representation associated to a non-CM elliptic curve over a number field has open image in GL_2(\hat{Z}). In Greicius' thesis, he develops necessary and sufficient criteria for determining when…
A curve over a field k is pointless if it has no k-rational points. We show that there exist pointless genus-3 hyperelliptic curves over a finite field F_q if and only if q < 26, that there exist pointless smooth plane quartics over F_q if…
Let $A/\mathbb{Q}$ be an abelian variety of dimension $g\geq 1$ that is isogenous over $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$ to $E^g$, where $E$ is an elliptic curve. If $E$ does not have complex multiplication (CM), by results of Ribet and Elkies…
In this paper we study a family of curves obtained by fibre products of hyperelliptic curves. We then exploit this family to construct examples of curves of given genus g over a finite field Fq with many rational points. The results…
We show that up to isomorphism there are exactly twenty pairs $(C,E)$, where $C$ is a genus-$2$ curve over ${\mathbf C}$, where $E$ is an elliptic curve over ${\mathbf C}$, and where for every integer $n>1$ there is a map of degree $n$ from…
We study genus 2 covers of relative elliptic curves over an arbitrary base in which 2 is invertible. Particular emphasis lies on the case that the covering degree is 2. We show that the data in the "basic construction" of genus 2 covers of…
We show that for all finite fields F_q, there exists a curve C over F_q of genus 3 such that the number of rational points on C is within 3 of the Serre-Weil upper or lower bound. For some q, we also obtain improvements on the upper bound…