English

The quartic Fermat equation in Hilbert class fields of imaginary quadratic fields

Number Theory 2015-10-07 v1

Abstract

It is shown that the quartic Fermat equation x4+y4=1x^4 +y^4=1 has nontrivial integral solutions in the Hilbert class field Σ\Sigma of any quadratic field K=Q(d)K=\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{-d}) whose discriminant satisfies d1-d \equiv 1 (mod 8). A corollary is that the quartic Fermat equation has no nontrivial solution in K=Q(p)K=\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{-p}), for pp (>7)( > 7) a prime congruent to 77 (mod 8), but does have a nontrivial solution in the odd degree extension Σ\Sigma of KK. These solutions arise from explicit formulas for the points of order 4 on elliptic curves in Tate normal form. The solutions are studied in detail and the results are applied to prove several properties of the Weber singular moduli introduced by Yui and Zagier.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1410.3008,
  title  = {The quartic Fermat equation in Hilbert class fields of imaginary quadratic fields},
  author = {Rodney Lynch and Patrick Morton},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.3008},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:20:24.964Z