A refined conjecture of Mazur-Tate type for Heegner points

Summary In [MT1], Mazur and Tate present a refined conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer type for a modular elliptic curveE. This conjecture relates congruences for certain integral homology cycles onE(C) (the modular symbols) to the arithmetic ofE overQ. In this paper we formulate an analogous conjecture forE over a suitable imaginary quadratic fieldK, in which the role of the modular symbols is played by Heegner points. A large part of this conjecture can be proved, thanks to the ideas of Kolyvagin on the Euler system of Heegner points. In effect the main result of this paper can be viewed as a generalization of Kolyvagin's result relating the structure of the Selmer group ofE overK to the Heegner points defined in the Mordell-Weil groups ofE over ring class fields ofK. An explicit application of our method to the Galois module structure of Heegner points is given in Sect. 2.2.Oblatum 19-XII-1991, & 25-II-1992     

Special cohomology classes for modular Galois representations

Building on ideas of Vatsal [Uniform distribution of Heegner points, Invent. Math. 148(1) (2002) 1-46], Cornut [Mazur's conjecture on higher Heegner points, Invent. Math. 148(3) (2002) 495-523] proved a conjecture of Mazur asserting the generic nonvanishing of Heegner points on an elliptic curve E_/Q as one ascends the anticyclotomic Z_p-extension of a quadratic imaginary extension K/Q. In the present article, Cornut's result is extended by replacing the elliptic curve E with the Galois cohomology of Deligne's two-dimensional ?-adic representation attached to a modular form of weight 2k>2, and replacing the family of Heegner points with an analogous family of special cohomology classes.     

Heegner Point Kolyvagin System and Iwasawa Main Conjecture

We prove an anticyclotomic Iwasawa main conjecture proposed by Perrin-Riou for Heegner points for semi-stable elliptic curves E over a quadratic imaginary field K satisfying a certain generalized Heegner hypothesis, at an ordinary prime p. It states that the square of the index of the anticyclotomic family of Heegner points in E equals the characteristic ideal of the torsion part of its Bloch–Kato Selmer group(see Theorem 1.3 for precise statement). As a byproduct we also prove the equality in the Greenberg–Iwasawa main conjecture for certain Rankin–Selberg product(Theorem 1.7) under some local conditions, and an improvement of Skinner's result on a converse of Gross–Zagier and Kolyvagin theorem(Corollary 1.11).     

Higher Heegner points on elliptic curves over function fields

Let E be a modular elliptic curve defined over a rational function field k of odd characteristic. We construct a sequence of Heegner points on E, defined over a -tower of finite extensions of k, and show that these Heegner points generate a group of infinite rank. This is a function field analogue of a result of Cornut and Vatsal.     

Variation of Heegner points in Hida families

Given a weight two modular form f with associated p-adic Galois representation V _f , for certain quadratic imaginary fields K one can construct canonical classes in the Galois cohomology of V _f by taking the Kummer images of Heegner points on the modular abelian variety attached to f. We show that these classes can be interpolated as f varies in a Hida family and construct an Euler system of big Heegner points for Hida’s universal ordinary deformation of V _f . We show that the specialization of this big Euler system to any form in the Hida family is nontrivial, extending results of Cornut and Vatsal from modular forms of weight two and trivial character to all ordinary modular forms, and propose a horizontal nonvanishing conjecture for these cohomology classes. The horizontal nonvanishing conjecture implies, via the theory of Euler systems, a conjecture of Greenberg on the generic ranks of Selmer groups in Hida families.     

Rational torsion on optimal curves and rank-one quadratic twists

When an elliptic curve E^′/Q of square-free conductor N has a rational point of odd prime order l?N, Dummigan (2005) in [Du] explicitly constructed a rational point of order l on the optimal curve E, isogenous over Q to E^′, under some conditions. In this paper, we show that his construction also works unconditionally. And applying it to Heegner points of elliptic curves, we find a family of elliptic curves E^′/Q such that a positive proportion of quadratic twists of E^′ has (analytic) rank 1. This family includes the infinite family of elliptic curves of the same property in Byeon, Jeon, and Kim (2009) [B-J-K].     

Visibility of ideal classes

Cremona, Mazur, and others have studied what they call visibility of elements of Shafarevich–Tate groups of elliptic curves. The analogue for an abelian number field K is capitulation of ideal classes of K in the minimal cyclotomic field containing K. We develop a new method to study capitulation and use it and classical methods to compute data with the hope of gaining insight into the elliptic curve case. For example, the numerical data for number fields suggests that visibility of non-trivial Shafarevich–Tate elements might be much more common for elliptic curves of positive rank than for curves of rank 0.     

Ray class fields generated by torsion points of certain elliptic curves

We first normalize the derivative Weierstrass ???-function appearing in the Weierstrass equations which give rise to analytic parametrizations of elliptic curves, by the Dedekind ??-function. And, by making use of this normalization of ???, we associate a certain elliptic curve to a given imaginary quadratic field K and then generate an infinite family of ray class fields over K by adjoining to K torsion points of such an elliptic curve. We further construct some ray class invariants of imaginary quadratic fields by utilizing singular values of the normalization of ???, as the y-coordinate in the Weierstrass equation of this elliptic curve, which would be a partial result towards the Lang?CSchertz conjecture of constructing ray class fields over K by means of the Siegel?CRamachandra invariant.     

Quaternion algebras, Heegner points and the arithmetic of Hida families

Given a newform f, we extend Howard??s results on the variation of Heegner points in the Hida family of f to a general quaternionic setting. More precisely, we build big Heegner points and big Heegner classes in terms of compatible families of Heegner points on towers of Shimura curves. The novelty of our approach, which systematically exploits the theory of optimal embeddings, consists in treating both the case of definite quaternion algebras and the case of indefinite quaternion algebras in a uniform way. We prove results on the size of Neková???s extended Selmer groups attached to suitable big Galois representations and we formulate two-variable Iwasawa main conjectures both in the definite case and in the indefinite case. Moreover, in the definite case we propose refined conjectures à la Greenberg on the vanishing at the critical points of (twists of) the L-functions of the modular forms in the Hida family of f living on the same branch as f.     

Special automorphisms on Shimura curves and non-triviality of Heegner points

We define the notion of special automorphisms on Shimura curves. Using this notion, for a wild class of elliptic curves defined over Q, we get rank one quadratic twists by discriminants having any prescribed number of prime factors. Finally, as an application, we obtain some new results on Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer (BSD) conjecture for the rank one quadratic twists of the elliptic curve X₀(49).     

Upper bounds for the height of S-integral points on elliptic curves

We establish new upper bounds for the height of the S-integral points of an elliptic curve. This bound is explicitly given in terms of the set S of places of the number field K involved, but also in terms of the degree of K, as well as the rank, the regulator and the height of a basis of the Mordell–Weil group of the curve. The proof uses the elliptic analogue of Baker’s method, based on lower bounds for linear forms in elliptic logarithms.     

Three-Selmer groups for elliptic curves with 3-torsion

We consider a specific family of elliptic curves with rational 3-torsion subgroup. We arithmetically define 3-Selmer groups through isogeny and 3-descent maps, then associate the image of the 3-descent maps to solutions of homogeneous cubic polynomials affiliated with the elliptic curve E and an isogenous curve E′. Thanks to the work of Cohen and Pazuki, we have solubility conditions for the homogeneous polynomials. Using these conditions, we give a graphical approach to computing the size of 3-Selmer groups. Finally, we translate the conditions on graphs into a question concerning ranks of matrices and give an upper bound for the rank of the elliptic curve E by calculating the size of the Selmer groups.     

The p-adic Gross-Zagier formula for elliptic curves at supersingular primes

Let p be a prime number and let E be an elliptic curve defined over ? of conductor N. Let K be an imaginary quadratic field with discriminant prime to pN such that all prime factors of N split in K. B. Perrin-Riou established the p-adic Gross-Zagier formula that relates the first derivative of the p-adic L-function of E over K to the p-adic height of the Heegner point for K when E has good ordinary reduction at p. In this article, we prove the p-adic Gross-Zagier formula of E for the cyclotomic ? _p -extension at good supersingular prime p. Our result has an application for the full Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. Suppose that the analytic rank of E over ? is 1 and assume that the Iwasawa main conjecture is true for all good primes and the p-adic height pairing is not identically equal to zero for all good ordinary primes, then our result implies the full Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture up to bad primes. In particular, if E has complex multiplication and of analytic rank 1, the full Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is true up to a power of bad primes and 2.     

Towards an ‘average’ version of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

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The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture states that the rank of the Mordell-Weil group of an elliptic curve E equals the order of vanishing at the central point of the associated L-function L(s,E). Previous investigations have focused on bounding how far we must go above the central point to be assured of finding a zero, bounding the rank of a fixed curve or on bounding the average rank in a family. Mestre (1986) [Mes] showed the first zero occurs by , where NE is the conductor of E, though we expect the correct scale to study the zeros near the central point is the significantly smaller . We significantly improve on Mestre's result by averaging over a one-parameter family of elliptic curves E over Q(T). We assume GRH, Tate's conjecture if E is not a rational surface, and either the ABC or the Square-Free Sieve Conjecture if the discriminant has an irreducible polynomial factor of degree at least 4. We find non-trivial upper and lower bounds for the average number of normalized zeros in intervals on the order of (which is the expected scale). Our results may be interpreted as providing further evidence in support of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, as well as the Katz-Sarnak density conjecture from random matrix theory (as the number of zeros predicted by random matrix theory lies between our upper and lower bounds). These methods may be applied to additional families of L-functions.

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For a video summary of this paper, please click here or visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EVYPNi_LG0.     

Elliptic logarithms,diophantine approximation and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

Most, if not all, unconditional results towards the abc-conjecture rely ultimately on classical Baker’s method. In this article, we turn our attention to its elliptic analogue. Using the elliptic Baker’s method, we have recently obtained a new upper bound for the height of the S-integral points on an elliptic curve. This bound depends on some parameters related to the Mordell-Weil group of the curve. We deduce here a bound relying on the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer, involving classical, more manageable quantities. We then study which abc-type inequality over number fields could be derived from this elliptic approach.     

Selmer groups of elliptic curves that can be arbitrarily large

In this article, it is shown that certain kinds of Selmer groups of elliptic curves can be arbitrarily large. The main result is that if p is a prime at least 5, then p-Selmer groups of elliptic curves can be arbitrarily large if one ranges over number fields of degree at most g+1 over the rationals, where g is the genus of X₀(p). As a corollary, one sees that p-Selmer groups of elliptic curves over the rationals can be arbitrarily large for p=5,7 and 13 (the cases p?7 were already known). It is also shown that the number of elements of order N in the N-Selmer group of an elliptic curve over the rationals can be arbitrarily large for N=9,10,12,16 and 25.     

Analogue of Kida's formula for certain strongly admissible extensions

We study the Iwasawa theory of elliptic curves over certain infinite (non-commutative) p-adic Galois-Lie extensions. In particular, we consider the analogue of the classical Iwasawa λ-invariant and Kida's formula for the dual Selmer group.     

Interpolation Formulas and Auxiliary Functions

We prove an interpolation formula for “semi-cartesian products” and use it to study several constructions of auxiliary functions. We get in this way a criterion for the values of the exponential map of an elliptic curve E defined over Q. It reduces the analogue of Schanuel's conjecture for the elliptic logarithms of E to a statement of the form of a criterion of algebraic independence. We also consider a construction of auxiliary function related to the four exponentials conjecture and show that it is essentially optimal. For analytic functions vanishing on a semi-cartesian product, we get a version of the Schwarz lemma in which the exponent involves a condition of distribution reminiscent of the so-called technical hypotheses in algebraic independence. We show by two examples that such a condition is unavoidable.     

Some examples of 5 and 7 descent for elliptic curves over Q

We perform descent calculations for the families of elliptic curves over Q with a rational point of order n = 5 or 7. These calculations give an estimate for the Mordell-Weil rank which we relate to the parity conjecture. We exhibit explicit elements of the Tate-Shafarevich group of order 5 and 7, and show that the 5-torsion of the Tate-Shafarevich group of an elliptic curve over Q may become arbitrarily large. Received October 6, 2000 / final version received November 14, 2000?Published online February 15, 2001