Rational points on elliptic curves over totally real fields and p-adic L-functions

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The PIs will generalize to the setting of totally real fields some recent work by Darmon and Bertolini for elliptic curves over the rational field. In this work, Darmon and Bertolini derive a p-adic analytic formula for Heegner points on elliptic curves that involves the central derivative of the two-variable p-adic L-function attached to the curve. The proposed work is related directly to the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer, an outstanding open conjecture that should shed light on the set of solutions to cubic polynomial equations in rational numbers (quotients of whole numbers). This conjecture relates the set of solutions to the behavior of the associated L-function, an auxiliary function that is defined in terms of the numbers of solutions to the polynomial equation when it is viewed as a congruence modulo varying prime numbers. The study of cubic equations via L- functions has been the center of fruitful mathematical research at least since the 1960s.