In this paper, we prove the assertion that the number of monic cubic polynomials $F(x) = x^3 + a_2 x^2 + a_1 x + a_0$ with integer coefficients and irreducible, Galois over ${\mathbb {Q}}$ satisfying $\max \{|a_2|, |a_1|, |a_0|\} \leq X$ is bounded from above by $O(X (\log X)^2)$. We also count the number of abelian monic binary cubic forms with integer coefficients up to a natural equivalence relation ordered by the so-called Bhargava–Shankar height. Finally, we prove an assertion characterizing the splitting field of 2-torsion points of semi-stable abelian elliptic curves.

In this paper we study the family of elliptic curves $E/{{\mathbb {Q}}}$, having good reduction at $2$ and $3$, and whose $j$-invariants are small. Within this set of elliptic curves, we consider the following two subfamilies: first, the set of elliptic curves $E$ such that the quotient $\Delta (E)/C(E)$ of the discriminant divided by the conductor is squarefree; and second, the set of elliptic curves $E$ such that the Szpiro quotient$\beta _E:=\log |\Delta (E)|/\log (C(E))$ is less than $7/4$. Both these families are conjectured to contain a positive proportion of elliptic curves, when ordered by conductor. Our main results determine asymptotics for both these families, when ordered by conductor. Moreover, we prove that the average size of the $2$-Selmer groups of elliptic curves in the first family, again when these curves are ordered by their conductors, is $3$. The key new ingredients necessary for the proofs are ‘uniformity estimates’, namely upper bounds on the number of elliptic curves with bounded height, whose discriminants are divisible by high powers of primes.

We show that any smooth projective cubic hypersurface of dimension at least 29 over the rationals contains a rational line. A variation of our methods provides a similar result over p-adic fields. In both cases, we improve on previous results due to the second author and Wooley.

We include an appendix in which we highlight some slight modifications to a recent result of Papanikolopoulos and Siksek. It follows that the set of rational points on smooth projective cubic hypersurfaces of dimension at least 29 is generated via secant and tangent constructions from just a single point.

Inspired by methods of N. P. Smart, we describe an algorithm to determine all Picard curves over $\mathbb{Q}$ with good reduction away from 3, up to $\mathbb{Q}$-isomorphism. A correspondence between the isomorphism classes of such curves and certain quintic binary forms possessing a rational linear factor is established. An exhaustive list of integral models is determined and an application to a question of Ihara is discussed.

Let $C\in \mathbb{Z}[x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}]$ be a cubic form. Assume that $C$ splits into four forms. Then $C(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=0$ has a non-trivial integer solution provided that $n\geqslant 10$.

Let ${\it\mu}_{1},\ldots ,{\it\mu}_{s}$ be real numbers, with ${\it\mu}_{1}$ irrational. We investigate sums of shifted $k$th powers $\mathfrak{F}(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{s})=(x_{1}-{\it\mu}_{1})^{k}+\cdots +(x_{s}-{\it\mu}_{s})^{k}$. For $k\geqslant 4$, we bound the number of variables needed to ensure that if ${\it\eta}$ is real and ${\it\tau}>0$ is sufficiently large then there exist integers $x_{1}>{\it\mu}_{1},\ldots ,x_{s}>{\it\mu}_{s}$ such that $|\mathfrak{F}(\mathbf{x})-{\it\tau}|<{\it\eta}$. This is a real analogue to Waring’s problem. When $s\geqslant 2k^{2}-2k+3$, we provide an asymptotic formula. We prove similar results for sums of general univariate degree-$k$ polynomials.

We introduce the notion of orbital $L$-functions for the space of binary cubic forms and investigate their analytic properties. We study their functional equations and residue formulas in some detail. Aside from their intrinsic interest, the results from this paper are used to prove the existence of secondary terms in counting functions for cubic fields. This is worked out in a companion paper.

In his Tata Lecture Notes, Igusa conjectured the validity of a strong uniformity in the decay of complete exponential sums modulo powers of a prime number and determined by a homogeneous polynomial. This was proved for non-degenerate forms by Denef–Sperber and then by Cluckers for weighted homogeneous non-degenerate forms. In a recent preprint, Wright has proved this for degenerate binary forms. We give a different proof of Wright’s result that seems to be simpler and relies upon basic estimates for exponential sums mod $p$as well as a type of resolution of singularities with good reduction in the sense of Denef.

We prove analogues of several well-known results concerning rational maps between quadrics for the class of so-called quasilinear p-hypersurfaces. These hypersurfaces are nowhere smooth over the base field, so many of the geometric methods which have been successfully applied to the study of projective homogeneous varieties over fields cannot be used. We are therefore forced to take an alternative approach, which is partly facilitated by the appearance of several non-traditional features in the study of these objects from an algebraic perspective. Our main results were previously known for the class of quasilinear quadrics. We provide new proofs here, because the original proofs do not immediately generalise for quasilinear hypersurfaces of higher degree.

Let X be a projective cubic hypersurface of dimension 11 or more, which is defined over ℚ. We show that X(ℚ) is non-empty provided that the cubic form defining X can be written as the sum of two forms that share no common variables.

By using a more efficient way of ‘almost diagonalizing’, known results on small fractional parts of general real cubic forms in a small number of variables, are improved. In particular, for ternary forms the method gives a bound superior to that arising from simply reducing to a cubic form in one variable.